Premier seeks EU lifeline after confidence vote

BRUSSELS — British Prime Minister Theresa May implored European Union leaders Thursday to help her sell the Brexit divorce deal at home, only to be told that her proposals are not clear enough for the bloc to offer a helping hand now.

Instead, the EU said it would plow ahead with plans for a cliff-edge “no-deal” Brexit on March 29, with a raft of contingency measures to be presented next week.

May came to an EU summit in Brussels seeking support after a week that saw her Brexit deal pilloried in Parliament and her job threatened by lawmakers from her own party. She pleaded with the 27 other EU leaders to “hold nothing in reserve” in helping her sell the Brexit deal to hostile British lawmakers.

“There is a majority in my Parliament who want to leave with a deal, so with the right assurances this deal can be passed,” May said, warning her EU counterparts that failure could mean the United Kingdom crashing out of the bloc without a deal, “with all the disruption that would bring.”

EU officials, however, seemed exasperated at the lack of concrete new ideas from Britain. A proposal for encouraging wording offering to give Britain further assurances was left out of the leaders’ final summit conclusions on Brexit.

“I do find it uncomfortable that there is an impression perhaps in the U.K. that it is for the EU to propose solutions,” European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said Friday. “It is the UK leaving the EU. And I would have thought it was rather more up to the British government to tell us exactly what they want.”

He said the British must “set out their expectations” if they want to avoid tumbling out of the EU without a deal.

May had earlier acknowledged that major progress was unlikely at the two-day summit, even as she tried to get tweaks to the withdrawal package that she could use to win over opponents — particularly pro-Brexit lawmakers whose loathing of the deal triggered a challenge to her leadership this week.

Her week from hell began Monday, when she scrapped a planned vote in Parliament on her Brexit divorce deal at the last minute to avoid a heavy defeat.

Anger at the move helped trigger a no-confidence vote among May’s own Conservative lawmakers Wednesday. May won, but more than a third of her party’s lawmakers voted against her.