Lawmakers urged to ‘hold their nerve’
BREXIT: MAY CONTINUES TO PURSUE AN ORDERLY EXIT
MP is trying to ‘play chicken with people’s livelihoods’.
Prime Minister Theresa May asked MPs yesterday for more time to try and revive her Brexit deal with the EU in what the opposition said was a ploy to “run down the clock”.
May updated parliament following a series of last-gasp meetings held in Belfast, Brussels and Dublin despite EU leaders’ insistence that they will not renegotiate the deal they had already struck with her.
Deal or no deal, Britain is due to leave the European Union on March 29, and a disorderly exit could cause chaos.
“The talks are at a crucial stage. We now all need to hold our nerve to get the changes this house requires and deliver Brexit on time,” May told lawmakers.
“Having secured an agreement with the EU for further talks, we now need some time to complete that process.”
May’s statement was seen by political commentators as an attempt to defuse any parliamentary rebellion in a series of votes on her strategy tomorrow.
May has promised MPs another chance to vote, on February 27, on what to do if no deal is reached.
MPs last month overwhelmingly rejected the deal struck between May and Brussels for Britain’s exit from the EU.
Ever since, she has been trying to secure changes to the accord that would satisfy parliament’s lower House of Commons.
Pro-Brexit MPs in May’s Conservative Party are unhappy, particularly with a so-called backstop provision intended to keep the border with Ireland free-flowing. Some fear it could leave Britain trapped in EU trade rules indefinitely with no withdrawal mechanism.
Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said May had come to parliament yesterday with “excuses and delays” and accused her of trying to “play chicken with people’s livelihoods”.
He said: “It appears the prime minister has just one real tactic: to run down the clock hoping members of this house are blackmailed into supporting a deeply flawed deal.”
For his part, Bank of England chief Mark Carney warned that leaving the EU without a transition deal “would be an economic shock for this country”, and said Brexit was an “acid test” of the globalised economy.
Added the City of London’s policy chief, Catherine McGuinness: “The last grains of sand are slipping through the hour glass as another day is lost in Brexit limbo.”
British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt was in Paris yesterday where he had “open and thoughtful discussions” with French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. –