Hold your nerve, May says
LONDON: British Prime Minister Theresa May told lawmakers yesterday to hold their nerve over Brexit and give her more time to negotiate a deal acceptable to both the European Union and the British Parliament.
The United Kingdom is on course to leave the European Union on March 29 without a deal unless May can persuade the bloc to amend the divorce deal she agreed last year and get it approved by British lawmakers.
‘‘The talks are at a crucial stage’’, May told Parliament.
‘‘We now all need to hold our nerve to get the changes this House requires and deliver Brexit on time.’’
The leader of the opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, accused her of running down the clock with sham negotiations to pressure Parliament into backing her deal.
After talks in Strasbourg at the European Parliament, UK Brexit minister Stephen Barclay said there was ‘‘a lot of goodwill on both sides’’ to achieve a deal.
However, Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s Brexit pointman, said he had yet to hear of a proposal to break the deadlock.
May’s hopes of delivering Brexit on time were also undermined by an ITV news report which cited Britain’s lead negotiator Olly Robbins as being over heard in a Brussels bar saying: ‘‘In the end, they [the EU] will probably just give us an extension’’.
British lawmakers rejected May’s withdrawal deal last month, with the major sticking point being the Irish ‘‘backstop’’ — an insurance policy to prevent the return of a hard border between British province Northern Ireland and EUmember Ireland.
Parliament is to hold a debate on Brexit in the next 24 hours, but it is not expected to change the course of the exit process, and no date has been set for another vote on May’s deal.
May said that if she had not yet reached a deal in Brussels, she would deliver another progress report on February 26 and provide another chance for Parliament to express its opinion the following day. — Reuters
IT is hard to see the wood for the trees, so complex and tortuous has the Brexit endgame become. But stand back for a moment, if you can, and a truly astonishing vista opens up.
It is of a Conservative prime minister purposefully threatening the people of Britain with all kinds of catastrophic consequences unless they and their elected representatives pipe down and do what she demands.
Day after day, as March 29 approaches, dire warnings proliferate about the disruptive, dangerous impact of the nodeal Brexit that Theresa May refuses to rule out.
NHS chiefs say that hospitals could run out of lifesaving drugs. Top company directors, the CBI and the Bank of England warn of gathering economic storm clouds. A Brexit emergency ‘‘crisis command centre’’ is being created.
If there is no deal, EU officials warn, about five million British and EU citizens will be left in indefinite limbo, with their rights to live, work and even drive enveloped in confusion. The vital automotive industry, already struggling with declining sales and investment, could be tipped over the edge. British export manufacturers are rightly terrified of Liam Fox’s ignorant claptrap about the benefits of zerotariff free markets.
Hard Tory Brexiters accused Remainers of running a ‘‘Project Fear’’ during the 2016 referendum. Yet what May and her economically illiterate ministers are doing right now really is an attempt to exploit all these accumulating, deliberately hyped fears. They seek to scare the British people into obedience to their view. Their crude message: back our hopelessly flawed withdrawal agreement — or else.
May’s excursions to Belfast, Dublin and Brussels last week were a waste of taxpayers’ money — and another intentional waste of time. The prime minister is engaged in an evermore reckless game of lastminute brinkmanship with Parliament and the EU. It beggars belief that, having insisted on yet more meetings, she offered no new ideas on the Irish backstop.
As the prospects recede for achieving a Brexit outcome that is anything short of calamitous, Labour must reject Tory fearmongering and commit to backing a fresh vote on our relationship with Europe.