Brexit: No third vote for May’s deal

U.K. speaker stymies PM’s bid, invoking provision to demand ‘fundamentally different plan’ to vote on

LONDON — The speaker of Britain’s House of Commons dealt a potentially fatal blow to Prime Minister Theresa May’s ailing Brexit deal on Monday, saying the government couldn’t keep asking lawmakers to vote on the same deal they have already rejected twice.

The government intended to try a third time to get lawmakers to back the deal, ideally before May joins EU leaders Thursday at a Brussels summit where she is set to ask the bloc to postpone Britain’s departure. May has warned opponents that a failure to approve her Brexit divorce deal would mean a long, and possibly indefinite, delay to Britain’s departure from the EU.

Speaker John Bercow scuttled May’s plan, saying that centuries-old parliamentary rules prevent “the same proposition or substantially the same proposition” from being brought back repeatedly for votes in a session of Parliament.

He said a new motion would have to be “fundamentally different. Not different in terms of wording, but different in terms of substance.”

The ruling caused uproar on the government side of the House of Commons. Solicitor General Robert Buckland said Britain was facing a “major constitutional crisis,” with not much time to solve it.

By law, the U.K. will leave the EU on March 29, deal or no deal, unless it secures a delay from the bloc. Withdrawing without a deal could mean huge disruption for businesses and people in the U.K. and the 27 remaining EU countries.

“Frankly, we could have done without this,” Buckland told the BBC.

As interpreter and enforcer of Parliament’s rules, the speaker has broad powers. Bercow — whose booming cries of “Orderrrrr!” have made him something of a global celebrity — has often used his office to boost the influence of backbench lawmakers, to the annoyance of May’s government.

“Part of the responsibility of the speaker is, frankly, to speak truth to power,” he said Monday.

Even before Bercow’s ruling, May faced a struggle to reverse the huge margins of defeat for the Brexit divorce agreement in Parliament. It was rejected by 230 votes in January and by 149 votes last week.

Her goal was to win over Northern Ireland’s small, power-brokering Democratic Unionist Party. The DUP’s 10 lawmakers prop up May’s minority Conservative government, and their support could influence pro-Brexit Conservatives to drop their opposition to the deal.

Opposition centers on a measure designed to ensure there is no hard border between the U.K.’s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland after Brexit.

May has said if her deal is approved, she will ask EU leaders this week to extend the Brexit deadline until June 30 so that Parliament has time to approve the necessary legislation. If it isn’t, she will have to seek a longer extension that would mean Britain participating in May 23-26 elections for the European Parliament — something the government is keen to avoid.

EU leaders say they will only grant it if Britain has a solid plan for what to do with the extra time.