May takes deal to EU

FUTURE TIES NOW ISSUE She hopes to take back a document MPs will find acceptable.

British Prime Minister Theresa May brought her Brexit battle to Brussels yesterday, just four days before the divorce deal is to be signed. After enduring another parliamentary grilling at prime minister’s question time in London, she went for talks with EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker.

Having seen off, for now, a potential leadership challenge by hardline Brexiteers in her own party, she hopes to wring out of Brussels a Brexit arrangement she can sell to her parliament.

The withdrawal treaty itself is all but final and preparations are under way for a summit on Sunday to sign it, but there is still the matter of a parallel 20-page political declaration on future EU-UK ties.

European diplomats and EU officials have been in intense talks on the political declaration this week. One of them said they now expected to publish it this morning, after May’s afternoon talks with Juncker.

Neither side has much wiggle room left to polish the text, but May must show she has left nothing on the table if she is to convince British MPs to ratify the deal in coming weeks.

May faces pressure from her Northern Irish allies, who oppose a deal they say weakens British sovereignty in their province, and from Spain, which warned it might oppose the accord over the issue of Gibraltar.

Two of May’s top ministers