Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Labor Party ends EU-exit talks early
LONDON — Bipartisan talks on how to take Britain out of the European Union collapsed Friday, when the opposition Labor Party pulled out of discussions, ending the latest attempt to salvage the beleaguered process and leaving it in a state of deadlock.
In a letter to Prime Minister Theresa May, the Labor leader, Jeremy Corbyn, wrote that the negotiations “have now gone as far as they can.”
For weeks, negotiations between ministers in the Conservative government and senior Labor figures had failed to produce any breakthrough to the EU-exit impasse that has wrecked the leadership of May and provoked a sharp backlash against both main parties from disenchanted voters, who vented their anger in recent local elections.
May has been unable to unite her party behind the agreement she negotiated with the EU, leading her to turn to Labor for support, which has intensified calls from fellow Conservatives for her to step down. On Thursday, she announced that she would set out a timetable for her departure next month, and Conservatives whose EU-exit views are even farther from Labor’s are vying to succeed her.
While the talks have been conducted in good faith, “we have been unable to bridge important policy gaps between us,” Corbyn wrote in his letter. “Even more crucially, the increasing weakness and instability of your government means there cannot be confidence in securing whatever might be agreed between us.”
The breakdown was little surprise as both parties are badly split on the issue, and neither leader had much room to maneuver. Many Conservative lawmakers were angry about the talks with Labor, and many Labor lawmakers had voiced discontent at taking part in negotiations designed to help salvage May’s tenure by getting Brexit over the line.
May blamed the opposition’s divisions for the failure of the talks. The problem, she said at a campaign stop in Bristol, was that Labor could not decide “whether they want to deliver Brexit or hold a second referendum.”
The collapse is yet another setback to a prime minister who had already suffered a string of defeats and has been hounded by members of her own party to leave.
Parliament has voted three times to reject her exit plan, which would aim to keep Britain closely tied to the bloc at least until the end of 2020 but then extract it from the EU’s main economic structures.
May had hoped to lure Labor with the prospect that Britain could stay — at least temporarily — in a type of customs union with the bloc, thereby eliminating the need for tariffs and many border checks on goods flowing between Britain and continental Europe.
But that did not prove enough to tempt Labor, which is in favor or retaining closer ties to the EU to protect the economy. It had argued that May had not offered enough concessions and that, in any case, her successor might be a hard-line EU-exit supporter who would tear up any agreement.
On Thursday, Britons will vote in elections to the European Parliament, almost three years after they voted in a referendum to quit the bloc.
May had hoped the European elections, in which her party faces big losses, could be averted by agreeing on an exit plan with Labor.
She said earlier this week that she would attempt a fourth vote on her plan early next month.
Britain was due to leave the EU on March 29, but, amid the political impasse in the country, the EU extended the Brexit deadline until Oct. 31.
The government is expected to try to seek a consensus in Parliament on the way ahead by holding votes on different options. But previous efforts to do so have failed.
May wants the Labor Party to agree to abide by the outcome of such votes, but there is little incentive for the opposition to sign up to an outcome that it cannot control. And, without the support of Labor, that process looks doomed to leave Brexit at an impasse.
However, pressure on May and Corbyn to reach a deal increased earlier this month, after local elections that were bad for both parties. While the Conservatives lost 1,300 seats in local municipalities, Labor failed to take advantage, shedding around 80 itself.
Information for this article was contributed by Jill Lawless and Gregory Katz of The Associated Press.