May refuses to back down

BRITISH Prime Minister Theresa May failed yesterday to persuade the Northern Irish party that props up her government to back her Brexit deal, just hours before lawmakers were due to resume debate on the divorce agreement.

May has refused to back down over her deal which envisages close trading ties with the EU after leaving in March, pressing ahead with a vote in parliament on January 15 that she looks set to lose, throwing Brexit into deeper uncertainty. May postponed a vote on the deal last month, admitting it would be defeated, instead promising to seek “legal and political assurances” from the EU to ease concerns, particularly over a plan to keep an open border on the island of Ireland.

But the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) said it could still not support the so-called backstop arrangements, increasing the likelihood of parliament rejecting the deal and opening the way for a disorderly exit or another referendum on EU membership. With the likelihood of a no-deal Brexit rising, the EU is looking at how Brexit might be postponed and pro-EU campaigners are testing ways Britain could stage another referendum after voters narrowly backed leaving in 2016. May again yesterday called on MPs to vote for her deal, suggesting she was confident of getting further assurances from the EU to ease their concerns and offering Northern Ireland more control over the backstop arrangement to prevent the return to a hard border with EU member Ireland.

But Northern Irish politicians were swift to dismiss her proposals to offer Northern Ireland a “strong voice and role in any decision to bring the backstop into effect”. Sammy Wilson, the Brexit spokesman for Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, said: “The only thing which could swing the DUP round is if the backstop as it applies to the UK as a whole or to Northern Ireland specifically were removed from this agreement.”

Wilson, one of 10 DUP MPs propping up May’s minority government, cast as “window dressing” her proposals to give the Northern Irish assembly the power to vote against new EU rules if the border backstop comes into force after Brexit. Her deal, he said, was “ruinous”. Britain is due to leave the EU on March 29.

May told MPs that parliament had a choice: backing her deal or risk Britain leaving the bloc without a deal, a scenario many businesses say would disrupt the economy.

Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington said: “I don’t think the British public are served by fantasies about magical, alternative deals that are somehow going to spring out of a cupboard in Brussels.”