May under the gun on Brexit deal
Brit PM’s ‘Plan B’ attacked my lawmakers
LONDON — Prime Minister Theresa May is determined to get a tweaked version of her rejected European Union divorce deal through Parliament. British lawmakers have other ideas — lots of other ideas.
May’s Conservative government is headed for a showdown with Parliament next week, when lawmakers get to vote on the prime minister’s latest proposal, and can try to amend it to send her in another direction.
After the divorce agreement struck between the U.K. government and the bloc was resoundingly rejected last week, May held talks with government and opposition politicians and came up with a “Plan B” — one that looked remarkably similar to her Plan A.
May told the House of Commons on Monday that she was aiming to win lawmakers’ backing for her deal after securing changes from the EU to a contentious Irish border measure.
The bloc insists that it won’t renegotiate the withdrawal agreement. And opposition lawmakers say the scale of May’s defeat last week — 432 votes to 202 — shows she must radically alter her deal if it is to have any hope of approval.
But Parliament is deeply divided about what changes to make. Pro-Brexit lawmakers want to remove the Irish “backstop,” an insurance policy that would constrain British trade policy in order to ensure there are no customs checks between the U.K.’s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland. Pro-EU legislators want May to lift her insistence that Brexit means quitting the EU’s single market and customs union.
Amid the impasse, one thing is in short supply: time.
Britain is due to leave the EU on March 29, with or without a divorce deal.