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It came after UK House of Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom, a prominent supporter of the country’s exit from the European Union (EU), stepped down over May’s handling of Brexit.

Leadsom quit on Wednesday night, saying she had lost faith in the government’s approach to Brexit and therefore could not back the new Withdrawal Agreement Bill that May planned to present to the parliament on Thursday.

Speaking to reporters after her resignation, Leadsom refused to answer the question whether she wanted May to quit her job as the prime minister.

May will meet the chair of the powerful 1922 committee of Conservative lawmakers on Friday, after campaigning for the upcoming European Parliament elections on Thursday.

Her office said she was disappointed by Leadsom’s decision but would nevertheless stay focused on delivering Brexit.

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Brady, who chairs the Conservative Party’s influential 1922 Committee of backbench lawmakers, will tell her that 70 percent of her members of parliament want her to resign over her handling of Brexit, the Sunday Times said.

Britain was originally due to leave the European Union on March 29, but that deadline was pushed back to April 12 and then again to October 31 as May failed to break an impasse in parliament on the terms of Brexit.

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Her actions over coming days will decide whether she succeeds in taking back control, as well as shape the future of the UK.

On Wednesday, May will have to watch Parliament vote on a series of options as it attempts to come up with a Plan B for Brexit, after decisively rejecting the prime minister’s own deal on two occasions.

There are likely to be votes on softer versions of May’s deal, including whether the UK should stay in a customs union with the European Union, and on whether Britain should hold another referendum to decide if it does want to leave after all, CNN reported.

Both of these options are hated by Euroskeptic Brexiteers in May’s Conservative Party, whose opposition to her plan ultimately sunk it before it even reached Parliament.

May’s future depends now depends on her erstwhile enemies, however. As they face the possibility of Parliament supporting a softer Brexit than suggested by May, the arch-Brexiteers in the European Research Group may decide this is the moment they must back May’s deal as the best of a bad bunch.

While May was severely weakened this week, she retains some power over the process going forward.

It is she who has the power to travel back to Brussels for further talks with EU leaders, and it is she who can decide whether the indicative votes Wednesday evening are just that, indicative rather than binding.

On Monday, the government issued a statement condemning Parliament’s approval of indicative votes, warning that it sets a “dangerous, unpredictable precedent for the future.”

Yet it would be politically and morally damaging to her reputation if she completely ignored the will of Parliament at this late stage in the Brexit process, having largely dismissed the views of lawmakers up until now.

Nor is May’s own deal necessarily doomed. the prime minister could, in theory, get EU leaders to back a new consensus softer Brexit deal put forward by the Commons, and use that as leverage to win over more Brexiteer votes and the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), upon whose support May’s government relies, for her original plan — nearly five months after it was struck in Brussels.

Yet this strategy is high risk. On Monday, some Brexiteer Tory lawmakers insisted they would never vote for May’s deal, regardless of the offer on the table. Others, like ERG chairman Jacob Rees-Mogg and former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, appear to be on the verge of backing May’s plan. The prime minister is close to victory, despite her humiliating defeat last night.

That victory may be a pyrrhic one. There are senior Brexiteers who remain adamant that, in exchange for their votes, the prime minister must set out a timetable for her departure, perhaps after the new Brexit day of May 22 (agreed with Brussels last week, providing May’s deal passes).

On Sunday, May refused to entertain this scenario, but it may be, after events this week, she has little choice.

While seeming on the verge of collapse, the success of May’s deal has become a viable option once again.

But other, more stark outcomes remain strong possibilities. While British lawmakers have voted against a no-deal exit, and the EU has made clear its own opposition to such a potentially disastrous scenario, there still needs to be an affirmative vote in Parliament this week to approve the extension of the Brexit date and avoid the UK crashing out with no arrangements in place.

A second referendum might also still be on the cards, given the renewed momentum for that campaign after hundreds of thousands of people attended a march demanding a new vote in London over the weekend.

There is also a chance, small but not insignificant, that a general election is called as a way to break the ongoing stalemate in Parliament.

Whichever scenario comes to pass, it is increasingly likely that, having lost the trust and confidence of so many lawmakers, and relinquished control of Brexit to Parliament after several disastrous months, May will have to stand down as prime minister.

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May’s decision to hold a third vote on her Brexit plan next week, just days before she is due to attend an EU summit in Brussels, is a calculated gamble that she can finally bring the escalating Brexit drama to a head before formally seeking to delay Britain’s departure date from March 29 to June 30.

The prime minister said that if a deal was not agreed by MPs before the March 21 EU summit, she would be forced to seek “a much longer extension” of the exit process, requiring Britain to take part in European Parliament elections in May, the Financial Times reported.

The move infuriated Tory Eurosceptics but, after Wednesday night’s Commons votes, they are feeling extreme pressure to come into line and support May’s deal. “The only way out is for (Eurosceptics) to support the prime minister’s deal,” admitted one MP in the anti-EU European Research Group. “Otherwise chaos.”

The Democratic Unionist party, whose 10 MPs prop up May’s government and still oppose her deal, said on Thursday it was talking to the government and would continue to have “conversations aimed at getting a sensible deal for the entire UK and one that works for our neighbors in the Republic of Ireland”, according to a party official.

Conversations are understood to be taking place over an idea raised by Jacob Rees-Mogg, the head of the ERG, in the Commons earlier this week, on how article 62 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties could be used to enable the UK to exit any Irish backstop, the measure to prevent a hard border in Ireland.

Responding to Rees-Mogg on Tuesday, Brexit secretary Stephen Barclay said the UK would be entitled to end the treaty ratifying the withdrawal agreement “if the facts clearly warranted that there had been an unforeseen and fundamental change of circumstances affecting the essential basis of the treaty on which the United Kingdom’s consent had been given”.

He said: “It would, in the government’s view, be clear in those exceptional circumstances that international law provides the United Kingdom with a right to terminate the withdrawal agreement.”

In an unexpected challenge to May’s authority, four members of her own cabinet broke ranks and abstained in defiance of the party whip on Wednesday evening, backing the move to take a no-deal exit off the table permanently.

The pound rallied sharply on the sign of unexpectedly strong parliamentary support for leaving the EU with a formal agreement with Brussels, rising above $1.335, its highest level in almost a year. Against the euro, it hit €1.1772, its best level in almost two years.

In Asian trading on Thursday, the pound had slipped 0.67 per cent against the US dollar, trading at $1.3246 by early afternoon.

Despite MPs’ rejection of a no-deal Brexit, the European Commission made clear it was not up to the UK to determine if it left the EU with a deal or not; ultimately, the remaining 27 members must agree to extend talks beyond March 29.

 “To take no-deal off the table, it is not enough to vote against no-deal — you have to agree to a deal,” said a commission spokesman. “We have agreed a deal with the prime minister and the EU is ready to sign it.”

The amendment calling for the Commons to reject no-deal Brexit at any time and under any circumstances passed by 312 to 308 — a mere four votes — throwing Downing Street’s whipping operation into confusion.

The government’s own motion had sought to reject the no-deal option only for March, while keeping it on the table in the long term. Having seen that motion forcibly amended by MPs, May then sought to whip her own MPs against it in scenes that aides said were farcical.

That manoeuvre was even more convincingly rejected by the Commons by 321 to 278 votes in a show of force by parliamentarians.

On that final vote, 12 ministers, including four members of cabinet — Greg Clark, Amber Rudd, David Mundell and David Gauke — risked being sacked by abstaining. “They didn’t have much choice,” said one Tory aide. “They are principled people.”

Number 10 indicated that the rebels would not face the sack. Sarah Newton, a junior minister, resigned in order to vote against the government.

Parliament is preparing for its third historic vote of the week on Thursday evening, when MPs are expected to agree a time-limited extension of Article 50.

Although May wants MPs to back her deal, opposition Labor and pro-EU Conservative MPs will seek to prove there is a Commons majority for an alternative “soft Brexit” plan, including a customs union with the EU and single market membership.

Although Downing Street does not favor “indicative votes” in the Commons next week to test support for a Brexit Plan B, it is likely to be imposed upon a prime minister who has lost control of Brexit.

Philip Hammond, the chancellor, told Sky News on Thursday that while he “would be delighted if a consensus emerges behind the prime minister’s deal . . . we also have to explore other options for parliament to express a view about how we resolve this impasse.”

 “I understand why (Brexiters) may not find the prime minister’s deal perfectly in line with their view of the optimum future relationship. But it is clear the House of Commons has to find a consensus around something, and if it is not the prime minister’s deal, I think it will be something that is much less to the taste of those of the hard Brexit wing of my party.”

Downing Street hopes that if the Commons signals support for a much softer Brexit — such as seeking status similar to Norway, which is not an EU member but is in the single market — it could scare hardline Eurosceptic MPs into backing down and finally supporting May’s deal.

Anti-EU MPs hate the idea of staying in the single market, which would mean continuing payments to Brussels and allowing EU citizens freedom of movement in Britain.

Earlier, Hammond has promised an end to austerity if parliament was able to leave the EU with an agreed deal, suggesting that May may have to pivot to a softer Brexit to break the Westminster gridlock.

 “We will have the opportunity to start to map out a way forward towards building a consensus across this House for a deal we can, collectively support, to exit the EU in an orderly way,” Hammond told MPs.

In his Spring Statement, Hammond revealed official forecasts of economic growth slowing this year but picking up subsequently.

However, he warned MPs that those predictions were based on an orderly exit from the EU and that a no-deal Brexit could imperil a “deal dividend” of up to £26bn.

European leaders are growing increasingly exasperated by the failure of the House of Commons to decide a way forward with just over two weeks left before the UK is due to leave the EU.

Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, told the European Parliament in Strasbourg that the chances of Britain leaving the bloc without a deal by “accident” were rising by the day.

 “The risk of no-deal has never been higher,” he said. “I recommend not to underestimate that risk and its consequences.”

John McDonnell, UK shadow chancellor, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Labor would call for a “limited” extension to Article 50 on Thursday.

He said: “We’ll be putting forward our own proposals about a limited extension because there is no way in which, to be frank, even if Theresa May’s deal had gone through yesterday I think the prime minister would have had to apply for an extension because most of the legislation associated with a deal hasn’t gone through yet.”

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Officials said they had offered fresh assurances on the issue of the Irish backstop ahead of Tuesday’s second vote by MPs on Theresa May’s deal.It was “now for the Commons to take an important set of decisions”, they said. Labour and Tory MPs have told the PM she must honour her commitment to put her deal to the vote again on Tuesday.

Amid speculation the vote could be postponed or downgraded, No 10 confirmed it remained the plan to go ahead with another “meaningful vote”. Downing Street said the PM’s focus was “getting on with the work required to allow MPs to support the deal and to bring this stage of the process to an end”.

The BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg said the prime minister was “likely” to head to Strasbourg later – where European Parliament is based.

What the BBC does not say!

Like many English media, the BBC does not reveal many of the behind-the-scenes truths about the choices and policies of the two traditional parties in terms of exit from Europe.

Britain should leave the EU in March, but parliamentarians opposed the prime minister’s plan in January. They wanted to make changes to the plan. However, there are other realities beyond the controversy that has emerged between the supporters and opponents of PM’s plan!

It should not be forgotten that according to the statements of the officials of both mainstream British parties, the Labor Party and the Conservative Party, the probability of holding a referendum is not to be ruled out again.

The precondition for a referendum on this is to “create blind nodes” on the BREXIT, and to make demands among public opinion to hold a referendum again. The British government has allegedly committed itself to pursuing its departure from Europe (following the 2016 referendum), but is actually redirecting public opinion to a referendum.

It is stressed that holding a re-referendum is the backdrop of the headlines of both the traditional British parties. In such a situation, “the complexity of the mystery of the departure of Europe” by media like the BBC is a policy that we have been seeing over the past two years.

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The British parliament will vote later on Thursday on Prime Minister Theresa May’s plan for an agreement with the European Union on the terms of its withdrawal from the bloc. Britain is due to quit the EU on March 29.

“I agree that in December it was difficult to spot a solution. Now, however, it is clear that the parliament will support the divorce deal in the current shape, with one exception – the backstop,” Hunt said in an interview in the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza published on Thursday, Reuters reported.

“If we change one thing – the entry that could potentially lock the United Kingdom in the customs union without an option to leave – the remaining part of the agreement will gain the support. I am sure this will work out.”

Hunt also said that it was “pointless” to delay the Brexit process without any agreement.

Last month, EU President Donald Tusk said British leaders who sold Brexit with no plan for how to deliver it deserve a “special place in hell”.

“I would think that there is a special place in heaven for those who respect democracy. Brexit was the biggest test for democracy that we have ever had,” Hunt told Gazeta Wyborcza.

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With the clock ticking down to March 29, the date set in law for Brexit, the United Kingdom is in the deepest political crisis in half a century as it grapples with how, or even whether, to exit the European project it joined in 1973, Reuters reported.

After May’s Brexit divorce deal was rejected by 432-202 lawmakers last week, the biggest defeat in modern British history, some lawmakers are trying to take control of Brexit from May’s weakened minority government.

May on Monday proposed tweaking her deal, a bid to win over rebel Conservative lawmakers and the Northern Irish party which props up her government, but Labor said May was in denial about the crushing defeat of her plans.

Labor put forward an amendment seeking to force the government to give parliament time to consider and vote on options to prevent a ‘no deal’ exit – a course May has repeatedly refused to rule out.

Among the options, Labor said, should be a permanent customs union with the EU and “a public vote on a deal” – both proposals that May has ruled out.

As the British parliament, which traces its roots through a 1,000 years of history, tries to avoid what most lawmakers think would be a disorderly Brexit without an approved deal, there is still no clear majority for an alternative option.

Lawmakers will debate and vote on the next steps on Jan. 29.

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May won the attempt to oust her from power by 325 to 306 votes.

The motion was called by opposition parties attempting to break a deadlock in Parliament over the deal May negotiated with the EU to leave the bloc. Defeat would have likely led to her resignation and the triggering of a general election within weeks.

She now has until Monday to devise a new Brexit plan acceptable to lawmakers. However, her opponents have not ruled out calling further no-confidence votes, USA Today reported.

In a short statement in the House of Commons following the vote, May said she would “continue to work to deliver on the solemn promise to the people of this country to deliver on the result of the referendum and leave the European Union.”

She added: “We must find solutions that are negotiable and command support.”

May lost Tuesday’s vote on the deal she agreed with the EU to leave the bloc by 432-202. But while the defeat was widely expected, the scale of the loss was not, and it was this – the largest parliamentary defeat of any British prime minister in history – that led to the calling of Wednesday’s vote by opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

He referred to her government Wednesday as a “zombie” administration.

Still, May stood a good chance of surviving the vote because even though many members of her own ruling Conservative Party voted against the exit deal on the grounds they believe it keeps the U.K. substantially tethered to the bloc, they still like and back her as leader. She survived another confidence vote late last year.

For many British lawmakers, the most contentious part of May’s EU deal is the Irish “backstop,” a largely unresolved issue to do with the land border between Northern Ireland (part of Britain) and Ireland (part of the EU). Years of peace between Northern Ireland’s Irish Catholic community and its British Protestant one have been ensured by the free trade and travel across that border that EU membership allows.

All concerned want to avoid a return to a “hard border” between Northern Ireland and Ireland after Brexit. The “backstop” is envisioned as a temporary measure to allow the border to remain open in the event that the U.K. and EU fail to reach a free trade deal.

Critics worry it could indefinitely maroon Northern Ireland outside the U.K., in the EU.

Meanwhile, both May and her counterparts in the EU have ruled out any major renegotiations on the deal that has already been signed off on.

Michel Barnier, the EU’s top Brexit negotiator, said Wednesday that he is stepping up preparations for a chaotic “no-deal” departure of Britain from the 28-nation bloc.

“Whatever happens, ratification of the withdrawal agreement (May’s deal) is necessary. It is a precondition,” he said.

Yet Barnier also appeared to leave the door open a little, saying there were “possible options” for further talks. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said “we still have time to negotiate” on Brexit, but that the next move belonged to May.

So far, May has not indicated what he Plan B might involve.

In her statement Wednesday night she said she intended to hold “a series of meetings between senior parliamentarians and representatives of the government over the coming days” but little else to calm the nerves of lawmakers, or the country.

“If we cannot have a general election – the British public must have the final say – with the option to stay in the EU,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan tweeted after the vote, referring to the possibility of a second national referendum on leaving the bloc.

Khan is a Labour member and deeply opposes leaving the EU.

However, one scenario May is trying to avoid is leaving the EU without a deal. And if nothing gets agreed to before March 29, that is precisely what will take place.

The majority of analysts and political scientists predict that if that happens, it will be troubling for Britain’s economy. The Bank of England warned it could cause the deepest recession in Britain in nearly 100 years. A survey by the American Chamber of Commerce estimates it could potentially threaten 1.4 million jobs and $593 billion in direct investment from U.S. companies.

Three million EU nationals who live in Britain under EU “freedom of movement” laws and 1.3 million Britons who do the same in other EU nations would effectively become illegal overnight. Decades-old EU legislation covering health, travel, security, trade and more would evaporate.

But Britain would still get what it voted for: a departure from the EU.

Only May’s resignation, a general election or a second referendum on Brexit – all still possible if unlikely at this point – would stand a chance of reversing Brexit.

“The time for little games is now over,” Germany’s foreign minister Heiko Maas said Wednesday, speaking on Deutschlandfunk radio.

Britain and the EU “need a solution” and “we need it quickly,” he added.

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 Now, with the British Parliament postponing the vote on the Brexit, and the possibility of the parliament’s negative vote to the final plan presented by Theresa May, the British Prime Minister, Europe, and London are both stuck in a political dead end. Despite these conflicts, it’s not really difficult to formulate the existing crisis between Europe and Britain!

The fact is that Theresa May has claimed that there is no better plan than the deal which was previously made between Britain and Europe. And “Exiting the EU with no deal” is the worst option for London. This is while some British MPs from both Conservative and Labor Parties have called for a negative vote on the deal achieved between London and the EU.

They’re now focusing on another option called “holding a second Referendum” on Brexit, which May apparently claims to be impossible! However, some analysts of the Europe and Britain affairs argue that through their apparent disagreement, the British government and parliament are trying to direct the British citizens towards participating in another referendum in this regard.

Meanwhile, both Labor and Conservative parties (in spite of their differences) are in fact completing the same puzzle.

On the other side, the European officials are also helping the British authorities to put the pieces of this puzzle together. On the one hand, they emphasize that Brexit, without the deal made between London and Brussels, is the worst possible option, and on the other hand, they insist that it is impossible to hold any other negotiations between Britain and the European Union on this issue.

European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker accordingly said: “The deal we achieved is the best possible. It’s the only deal possible. There is no room whatsoever for renegotiation.
“But of course there is room enough to give further clarifications and further interpretations without opening the withdrawal agreement” he added.

In other words, the European authorities are emphasizing the possibility of a better agreement (for the UK), which will provide a ground for holding a referendum on the Brexit. As noted, Angela Merkel plays an essential role in this equation. As Reuters has recently reported, Merkel has explicitly emphasized that there will be no other talks between European and British officials on Brexit, but efforts were being made to give Britain reassurances.

Of course, Merkel did not mention these efforts, but the British prime minister has told Merkel that it was in nobody’s interest for Britain to leave with no accord and that it will have its own economic and political consequences.

In any case, Theresa May tries to show the deal made between Brussels and London over the Brexit as a possible option, but the joint plan of the British government Parliament and the European authorities is such that it complicates this equation.
As it turned out, Theresa May has so far opposed the referendum.

But there is no guarantee that this opposition will persist forever. Besides the German Chancellor, Donald Tusk, the chairman of the European Council has also stated that European officials will never accept a resumption of negotiations on the Brexit and the UK withdrawal from the European Union.

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