Theresa May on Wednesday night pleaded with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to help save her Brexit deal, as EU leaders prepared to issue a stark ultimatum to MPs: back the prime minister next week or risk Britain crashing out of the EU on March 29.
Mrs May travels to Brussels on Thursday with her Conservative party divided against itself and facing warnings from European Council president Donald Tusk the EU could only guarantee the short delay to Brexit she seeks if MPs rapidly approve her divorce deal.
The prime minister is expected to make a third attempt to pass her Brexit agreement on Tuesday or Wednesday, but failure would leave Britain facing a potential cliff-edge exit next Friday and would put her own job on the line.
Mrs May on Wednesday wrote to Mr Tusk confirming Britain would not be ready to leave the EU next week and seeking a short extension of the Article 50 exit process until June 30, having previously weighed the idea of a longer delay.
In a short televised statement on Wednesday night, she again staked her position on securing a deal, saying, “I am not prepared to delay Brexit any further than June 30.”
She added that a longer extension would just give more time for “politicians to argue over the way forward”, while the public “want us to get on with it.”
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But Mrs May’s televised address failed to impress her critics, even within her own party. “What was actually the point of that?” said Conor Burns, a Eurosceptic Conservative MP. Another Tory MP, George Freeman, accused the prime minister of giving “a false list of options” by not offering parliament the chance to vote for a softer Brexit.
Lisa Nandy, a Labour MP who has been open to voting for Mrs May’s deal, called the prime minister’s statement “disgraceful” for pitting parliament against the people, and said it “will have cost [the government] support.”
Although Mr Tusk did not rule out a longer extension, his ultimatum made clear there was no support for an extended delay without a big change in British politics. Mr Corbyn is talking to Europhile Tories about an alternative “soft Brexit” strategy.
Mr Tusk said the UK’s proposed extension to June 30 “has its merits” but “creates a series of questions of a legal and political nature”. Both French President Emmanuel Macron and the European Commission will strongly oppose the date.
The commission believes the three-month delay sought by Mrs May would threaten the integrity of the EU since it would leave Britain inside the union during European Parliament elections in May, according to a leaked paper.
The EU’s misgivings about a long extension have been matched by Conservative Eurosceptics in Mrs May’s cabinet, who have warned the prime minister they would resign if she were to request a Brexit delay beyond June 30.
Mrs May’s decision to accede to their demands has heartened Brexit hardliners, who on Wednesday insisted they would continue to oppose her deal and would wait until June 30 in the hope that Britain would leave without a deal.
Faced with daunting parliamentary arithmetic, Mrs May was forced to plead with opposition leaders for their support. At a meeting on Wednesday night, she urged them to put aside party differences and back her deal in the national interest.
Mr Tusk raised the pressure on MPs to back the deal by saying that while a short extension to Article 50 “will be possible” but that it was “conditional on a positive vote on the withdrawal agreement in the House of Commons”.
He added that if Mrs May failed he could hold an emergency European Council meeting in Brussels at the end of next week to decide whether to let Britain stay in the EU beyond March 29 by granting an extension.
Although neither the UK nor the EU want to countenance the disruption of a no deal exit, British and European businesses may be unsure of their future trading relations until almost the last minute.
The disarray over Brexit created despair among many Tories. “I’ve never been more ashamed to be a member of the Conservative party,” said Dominic Grieve, former attorney-general.
There were some European voices urging restraint. Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s prime minister, said the EU should give Mrs May “some slack” on her request.
But Jean-Yves Le Drian, France’s foreign minister, said Paris would only be open to a “technical” extension of a few weeks to allow British institutions to finalise formal ratification Mrs May’s agreement with Brussels, reached in November. But he added that without a Commons vote to approve the deal, “the central scenario is a no-deal exit”.
Some pro-EU critics of Mrs May said they might back her plan in a vote next week to avoid leaving the union without an agreement with Brussels. “I’m increasingly coming to the conclusion that the only way to stop no-deal may be to vote for her deal,” said Gareth Snell, Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central. “I’m not happy about that. I think that was her plan all along.”
However, one pro-EU minister told the Financial Times: “This will only work if enough people switch to vote for the withdrawal agreement. If not, then we are just creating a new no-deal deadline and there is clearly no Commons majority for that.”
Additional reporting by Guy Chazan in Berlin and Naomi Rovnick, Jim Pickard and Laura Hughes in London
