May plots deal with Labour

British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Tuesday she would ask the European Union for a further delay to Brexit beyond April 12 to give her time to sit down with the opposition Labour Party in a bid to break the impasse over Britain’s departure.

Nearly three years since the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU in a shock referendum result, British politics is in crisis and it is unclear how, when or if it will ever quit the European club it first joined in 1973.

In a hastily arranged statement from her Downing Street office after spending more than seven hours chairing crisis cabinet meetings on how to plot a way out of the Brexit maze, May said she was seeking another short extension to Brexit.

“We will need a further extension of Article 50, one that is as short as possible and which ends when we pass a deal,” May said.

“We need to be clear what such an extension is for – to ensure we leave in a timely and orderly way.

“I am offering to sit down with the leader of the opposition and to try to agree on a plan – that we would both stick to – to ensure that we leave the European Union and that we do so with a deal.”

The move by May offers the prospect of keeping the UK much more closely tied to the EU after Brexit, as the Labour Party has called for a continued customs union with the EU and a close relationship with the EU’s single market.

Any plan, May said, would have to include the Withdrawal Agreement she agreed on with the EU in November and which the bloc says it will not reopen, rejecting the demands of eurosceptic hardliners in her Conservative Party who seek a clean break from the EU.

May said if she could not agree on a unified approach with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, a veteran socialist who voted against joining the bloc in 1975, the government would agree on a number of options on the future relationship.

The government would put these before the House of Commons in a series of votes.

“If we cannot agree on a single unified approach, then we would instead agree on a number of options for the future relationship that we could put to the House in a series of votes to determine which course to pursue,” May said.

“Crucially, the government stands ready to abide by the decision of the house.”

It was unclear what the impact of May’s move would be on her own febrile party, which has been grappling with an internal schism over Europe for the past three decades.

Fourteen British ministers spoke against a long extension at the cabinet meeting, The Times’ deputy political editor Sam Coates said.

Over half her legislators voted last week to go for a no-deal Brexit, to the dismay of British business.

“It seems to me that she wants to rely upon Labour votes to get this extension through,” David Jones, a Brexit supporting former Conservative minister, said.

“If she does, she is putting the future of the party in peril.”

May said she wanted the Withdrawal Agreement Bill to be passed before May 22 so the UK did not have to take part in elections that month to the European Parliament.