British Prime Minister Theresa May suffered an embarrassing defeat by lawmakers Thursday in a vote that left her bid to secure a European Union divorce deal stuck between an intransigent EU and a resistant U.K. Parliament with Brexit just six weeks away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The House of Commons voted by 303 votes to 258 against a motion reiterating support for May\u2019s approach to Brexit support expressed by lawmakers in votes just two weeks ago.May is struggling with little sign of success to win backing for her deal from both pro-Brexit and pro-EU lawmakers in Parliament, which rejected the agreement by a whopping 230 votes last month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The government was defeated when hard-line pro-Brexit lawmakers in the governing Conservatives abstained because they feel the government is effectively ruling out the threat of leaving the European Union without an agreement on departure terms and future relations, a move they say undermines Britain\u2019s bargaining position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pro-EU lawmakers in Britain\u2019s divided Parliament feel the opposite. They fear time is running out to seal a deal before Britain topples off a cliff. But the House of Commons on Thursday rejected two amendments from the opposition that sought to postpone Brexit or steer the U.K. away from the \u201cno-deal\u201d cliff edge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jeremy Corbyn, who heads the main opposition Labour Party, accused May of sitting on her hands, \u201choping that something will turn up that will save the day and save her face.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox, a prominent Brexit supporter in Cabinet, had warned that a government defeat, though not legally binding, would send the \u201cwrong signals\u201d to EU leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two weeks ago, Parliament sent a contradictory message, voting to send May back to Brussels to seek changes to a section of the withdrawal agreement intended to ensure an open border between the U.K.\u2019s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland after Brexit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
May has chosen to ignore that instruction and refuses to take a \u201cno-deal\u201d Brexit off the table as she attempts to win concessions from the bloc. Most businesses and economists say the British economy would be severely damaged if the country crashed out of the EU on the scheduled Brexit date of March 29 without a deal, bringing tariffs and other impediments to trade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The remaining 27 EU nations insist that the legally binding withdrawal agreement struck with May\u2019s government in November can\u2019t be renegotiated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
British Prime Minister Theresa May suffered an embarrassing defeat by lawmakers Thursday in a vote that left her bid to secure a European Union divorce deal stuck between an intransigent EU and a resistant U.K. Parliament with Brexit just six weeks away. The House of Commons voted by 303 votes to 258 against a motion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55050,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55051,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55049\/revisions\/55051"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}