British lawmakers voted to seek to delay Brexit on Thursday, for tentatively weeks or months, as Prime Minister Theresa May's plans for leaving the European Union have been repeatedly slaughtered by the Parliament. Also, lawmakers voted against holding a second Brexit referendum, a complete do-over that could see the results of the historic June 2016 voting undone. May offers the MPs a tough choice. They could either support her now twice rejected Brexit deal in a third “meaningful vote” (MV3) next week, or face the prospect of a rather long Brexit delay which could be pushed well into a year or more.
May told the lawmakers that if they back a deal by Wednesday, the day before a European summit, she will ask EU leaders for a “one-off extension” ending on June 30. The three months would be necessary to pass legislation in Britain and on the continent and to provide for an “orderly Brexit”. Hard-line Brexiteer and fellow member of May's Conservative Party, Christopher Chope criticised May and said, “Instead of accepting verdict of the House, she is stubbornly continuing to assert that her deal is a good deal. And now she is holding a pistol to our heads by threatening that we will lose Brexit altogether.”
In case the MPs reject May on her third attempt to win approval for her half-in, half-out compromise plan for Brexit, then she said she will ask EU leaders for a longer delay. Since she took up office, May has insisted that “Brexit means Brexit” that she would negotiate a good deal, and that Britain would leave on March 29. The March date was a deadline May herself triggered when she and the Parliament initiated Article 50 in the EU Treaty two years back.
Meanwhile, European leaders will have to decide what to do with Britain when they gather for a two-day conclave in Brussels next Thursday. They remain divided over how much rope to give. The suspense is such, Italian Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero Milanesi compared it to a “Hitchcock film.” Outspoken US President Donald Trump gave his two pence on the debate, and offered May a hand through a tweet that read, “My Administration looks forward to negotiating a large scale Trade Deal with the United Kingdom. The potential is unlimited!”
However, he took a quick u-turn when he met Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar later at the White House, where he said, “I'm surprised at how badly it's all gone from the standpoint of a negotiation. I gave the prime minister my ideas on how to negotiate it, and I think you would have been successful. She didn't listen to that and that's fine - she's got to do what she's got to do. I think it could have been negotiated in a different manner, frankly. I hate to see everything being ripped apart now.”
Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, tweeted yesterday that he would urge EU leaders to support a “long extension” if Britain needed to “rethink its Brexit strategy and build consensus around it.”
