Yes or No? Vital vote on Brexit today

BRITAIN’S exit from the EU hung on a knife-edge yesterday as Prime Minister Boris Johnson scrambled to persuade doubters to rally behind his lastminute EU divorce deal for an extraordinary vote in parliament today.

In one of the most striking flourishes of the three-year Brexit drama, Johnson confounded his opponents on Thursday by clinching a new deal with the EU, even though the bloc had promised it would never reopen a treaty it agreed last year.

Yet Johnson, the face of the Brexit campaign in the 2016 referendum, must now ratify the deal in the British parliament where he has no majority and opponents are plotting maximum political damage before an imminent election.

The numbers are too close to call: Johnson must garner 318 votes in the 650-seat Parliament to get a deal approved. Yet his Northern Irish allies are opposed to a deal and the three main opposition parties have pledged to vote it down.

Meanwhile, the organisers of a Dutch beach party to bid farewell to Britain as it leaves the EU said the festivities would go ahead on October 31, the scheduled Brexit date.

The party started as a joke that went viral on Facebook about gathering on the beach to wave goodbye to the Brits. Now, thousands of people are expected to attend what has morphed into a festival on the North Sea beach at the small town of Wijk aan Zee, near Amsterdam.

Spokesperson Annemarie Smit said yesterday organisers have got permission from the local municipality and “the party is going ahead whether Britain leaves or not”. |

DONKEYS via REUTERS THE words ‘Britain now wants to remain’ cut by anti-Brexit group Led By Donkeys in a field near Swindon, county Wiltshire, UK, on Thursday. |