Parliament demands say over ‘Brexit’
LONDON — Britain’s Parliament voted narrowly on Wednesday to demand a decisive say over the country’s plans to withdraw from the European Union, dealing an unexpected defeat to Prime Minister Theresa May, who had asked for maximum leeway to negotiate with Brussels on untangling decades of integration with the Continent.
Rebel lawmakers from the governing Conservative Party joined with pro-European members of opposition parties to require that any final deal to withdraw from the European Union be submitted to Parliament — as legislation — before it can be put into effect.
May had argued that going through such formal approval would add yet another hurdle to the already contentious and protracted negotiation over withdrawal — a process, known as “Brexit,” that is supposed to be completed by March 2019.
She had promised that lawmakers would get a vote eventually, but the lawmakers effectively refused to take her word for it, insisting by a formal vote — 309-305 — on their explicit right to approve any final deal.
Conservative rebels, led by Dominic Grieve, fear that without a specific, legal guarantee of a vote, Parliament might find itself being bypassed.
Those rebels joined with members of the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties — some of whom believe the nation made a grave mistake when it voted, in a June 2016 referendum, to approve leaving the European Union. The 309 lawmakers who formed the unlikely coalition on Wednesday to demand a final say over a withdrawal deal may not agree on much else.
Some lawmakers regret Parliament’s decision in June 2015 to call a referendum and surrender sovereignty on one of the most consequential decisions in Britain’s history. To some extent, the vote on Wednesday represented an attempt to retrieve that sovereignty.
Philip Davies, a Conservative lawmaker, warned that the new vote might be used “to overturn and frustrate” the will of the people, as expressed in the June 2016 referendum.
“If people in this House use that amendment for those purposes, the backlash from the British public will be like none seen before,” he said.