Brexit rebel MPs patch up with May

london — British Prime Minister Theresa May was set to avoid a damaging parliamentary defeat after rebels in her party appeared to strike a compromise over the exact timing of Brexit.

The government is trying to pass major domestic legislation to implement Brexit, and had wanted to enshrine the leaving date of March 29, 2019 in British law, two years after serving its intention to withdraw.

But Conservative rebel MPs, who helped deliver the government a stinging Brexit defeat in parliament on Wednesday, looked set to reject the plan over fears that Britain could crash out of the EU without a deal if talks overrun, heaping further worries on the vulnerable prime minister. A senior EU official said on Saturday that sealing a final deal by March 2019 was a daunting task, pointing out that the EU trade deal with Canada “is 1,598 pages of legal text, and we have negotiated for nine months and have 19 pages of non-legal text.” May is therefore under pressure from MPs to avoid a “cliff-edge” divorce that would throw the economy into chaos.

But at the same time she is being pressed by Brexit voters and eurosceptic potential usurpers in her own party to deliver Brexit in March 2019, as stipulated by the EU’s Lisbon Treaty. As a result, the rebels late Friday backed a new, more conciliatory, amendment to the Brexit bill to avert another House of Commons vote loss for the government. While the original plan to leave in March 2019 will stay in the bill, a new amendment will give ministers the power to delay the date if talks overrun. —