May drops plan for other Brexit vote before local council elections
4022 Mins Read
Theresa May has dropped a plan to try to secure parliamentary approval for her moribund EU withdrawal agreement before next week’s local elections, as hopes fade for any cross-party accord with Labour on Brexit.
The prime minister wants to ask MPs to vote on legislation to approve Britain’s exit from the EU, but the withdrawal agreement bill was not included in next week’s business for the House of Commons because of fears it would face certain defeat. Mrs May had been considering holding a vote on the bill ahead of the local elections on Thursday. But the government’s Brexit talks with Labour have stalled and many of Mrs May’s advisers are now resigned to the fact that the bill will not be approved before May 23, when Britain would have to take part in European Parliament elections.
One ally of the prime minister suggested the “next massive deadline” for passing Mrs May’s Brexit deal could slip to June 30, just before newly elected British MEPs would take their seats in the European Parliament for the first time. MPs have rejected Mrs May’s withdrawal agreement three times since January.
Meanwhile as the dust settles after months of chaos in Westminster, suspicions are growing on the other side of the Channel that the backstop could in fact be the very opposite: a brilliant deception device constructed by crack UK negotiators, which would allow a more reckless British prime minister to undermine the EU’s green and social standards while still keeping access to the European single market.
A new report, commissioned by the German Green party and seen by the Guardian, will exacerbate concerns in Berlin over the small print of the withdrawal agreement in its current form.
The deal, agreed between the EU and the UK in November 2018 but voted down three times in the House of Commons, states that the whole of the UK would remain in a de facto customs union with the EU until a trade and security agreement has been reached that prevents the setting up of a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
