Mrs May was hoping to persuade some Labour MPs to get behind her deal with a promise to allow MPs a vote on whether to call a second, confirmatory referendum if they waved her plans through. However, few domestically are predicting she will succeed if she puts her withdrawal agreement before Parliament in the first week in June. And in Germany, politicians were equally unimpressed.
Norbert Rottgen, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said: “Unfortunately, I am afraid that the new proposal substantially changes nothing.
“Theresa May remains true to her pattern of suggesting the same thing over and over again.”
Mr Rottgen said the vote on the Bill should instead have been directly linked to a second referendum, with another public vote automatically being triggered if it failed to pass.
He explaining: “That would have been something new then.”
Nils Schmid, from the Social Democratic Party (SPD) was similarly sceptical.
The party’s Foreign Affairs Committee spokesman said: “A second referendum is long overdue, after months of government and parliament blocking each other.”
He likewise doubted that Mrs May had sufficient authority to get her deal through Parliament.
Meanwhile, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, foreign affairs spokesman for the Free Democratic Party (FDP) said Mrs May was now “desperate”.
He added: “Her own people publicly look for her successor.”
Mr Lambsdorff said even if Mrs May should subsequently request another extension to Article 50, the process by which the UK would formally quit the bloc, the EU should not agree.
He said: “Even the participation of Britain in the European elections seems like an episode from Alice in Wonderland.
“This process damages both the reputation and the function of the EU.”
Speaking last week in Hamburg, German Chancellor Angela Merkel described Brexit as “a loss for everyone”.
She explained: “Germany, as a financial location, is benefiting from that but that doesn’t change the fact that ultimately Britain’s departure is a loss from my perspective.”
On Monday ahead of meetings with the prime ministers of Luxembourg and the Netherlands in Berlin, she further acknowledged Brexit would cause a “very challenging” shortfall in the EU’s budget.
(Additional reporting by Monika Pallenberg)
