USA TODAY International Edition
Lawmakers reject May’s EU exit plan
LONDON – British lawmakers on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May’s plan to take the nation out of the European Union, an outcome that could delay or derail Brexit and threatens May’s leadership.
May lost by 230 votes, one of the largest parliamentary defeats inflicted on a British government in nearly 100 years. In a short statement after the vote, May said Parliament should hold a confidence vote in her leadership, pre-empting an expected move by opposition parties to seek her ouster in the event of a large defeat.
Though the loss – 432-202 in the House of Commons – was widely expected, the scale of her defeat was unclear, and her leadership is under siege. Lawmakers will consider Wednesday whether to hold the confidence vote.
“EU citizens here and U.K. citizens in the EU deserve clarity as soon as possible, as do businesses and ordinary people,” May said.
Britain faces an impressive array of Brexit-related possibilities: more votes, a new prime minister or government, a postponed or shelved exit from the EU, a withdrawal in name only – or no exit at all.
Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labour Party, said the confidence vote would allow Parliament to “give its verdict on the sheer incompetence” of May’s government.
The U.K. is scheduled to depart the EU in less than two months, but negotiations have dragged on for months, and little has been achieved to solve the U.K.’s main existential crisis over Brexit: Half the country wants in, the other half out, while the majority of lawmakers want to respect the Brexit referendum’s outcome in 2016 but say the country is better off inside the 28nation political bloc.
The prime minister lost the vote because many lawmakers, including from May’s own ruling Conservative Party, objected to the deal she negotiated because they said it doesn’t go far enough to disentangle Britain’s economic and political ties to the EU.
Among the concerns: an unresolved question over the land border between Northern Ireland (part of Britain) and Ireland (part of the EU). Decades of peace between Northern Ireland’s Irish Catholic community and its British Protestant one have been facilitated by the free trade and travel across that border that EU membership allows.
If May survives a confidence vote, she’ll have three days to devise a backup plan.
She opposes holding a second referendum on Britain’s EU membership. Brexit passed in the referendum in 2016 by 52 percent to 48 percent.
One vote May couldn’t rely on was Tulip Siddiq’s.
The Labour lawmaker delayed the planned cesarean-section birth of her second child by two days to vote against May’s deal and entered Parliament in a wheelchair.
“If my son enters the world even one day later than the doctors advised but it’s a world with a better chance of a strong relationship between Britain and Europe, then that’s worth fighting for,” the 36-year-old told Britain’s Evening Standard.