Update: BBC reports that MPs will vote later on whether the UK government broke Parliament’s rules by failing to publish the full legal advice it received on the Brexit plan.
The government’s chief legal adviser, Attorney General Geoffrey Cox, published an overview on Monday. Opposition parties say that by limiting the information released, ministers ignored a binding Commons vote demanding they release the full advice.
No 10 insists publishing confidential advice is not in the national interest. It comes ahead of five days of debate on the EU withdrawal agreement, with MPs voting on the PM’s deal next week. The debate is scheduled to last eight hours a day, with Theresa May expected to say the UK is on course for a “better future outside the EU” and that her deal “takes back control of our borders, laws and money”.
Earlier: Prime Minister Theresa May will urge parliament to back her Brexit deal on Tuesday at the start of a high-stakes five-day debate that could determine her fate and whether Britain leaves the European Union without a deal.
France24 reports that May’s plan to keep close ties with the EU after leaving has been criticised by Brexit supporters and opponents alike, leaving her struggling to secure parliament’s approval in a vote that will follow the debate on Dec. 11.
If, against the odds, she wins the vote, Britain will leave the EU on March 29 under terms negotiated with Brussels — the country’s biggest shift in trade and foreign policy for more than 40 years.
If she loses, May could call for a second vote on the deal. But defeat would increase the chances of Britain leaving without a deal — a prospect that could mean chaos for Britain’s economy and businesses — and put May under fierce pressure to resign. Defeat could also make it more likely that Britain holds a second referendum, three years after voting narrowly to leave the EU, or lead to Brexit not happening.
But the deal, sealed in Brussels last month, has united critics at both ends of the political spectrum: eurosceptics say it will make Britain a vassal state while EU supporters – expressing the same idea though with different language – say the country will become a rule taker. Her allies in parliament, the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party which props up her government, have also rejected the deal and opposition parties say they cannot back it. May is pressing on nonetheless.
Few in the House of Commons, the lower house of parliament, seemed convinced so far.
On Monday, her government’s bid to calm another row over the legal advice received on the deal did little more than inflame tensions in parliament.
Her former Brexit minister David Davis said flatly: “This is not Brexit.”
