UK's May warns deal with opposition only way to secure Brexit

LONDON - British Prime Minister Theresa May on Saturday defended her decision to turn to Britain's main opposition party to get her EU divorce deal approved, warning without cross-party consensus Brexit could "slip through our fingers".

The beleaguered leader opened talks this week with the Labour Party in a bid to break months of stubborn opposition in parliament to the withdrawal agreement she struck with European leaders last year.

MPs have rejected three times her deal finalized with the bloc last November to end 46 years of membership.

May's overtures to Labour came ahead of an European Union summit on Wednesday where she must secure another Brexit extension until June 30 to prevent Britain crashing out the bloc at the end of next week with no accord.

The country's original departure date was delayed to April 12.

"We must deliver Brexit and to do so we must agree a deal," May said in a statement released by Downing Street, adding the two main parties agreed on major aspects of Brexit.

"That is the basis for a compromise that can win a majority in parliament and winning that majority is the only way to deliver Brexit.

"The longer this takes, the greater the risk of the UK never leaving at all. It would mean letting the Brexit the British people voted for slip through our fingers," she said.

However after several days of negotiations with Labour, its leader Jeremy Corbyn complained he had not "noticed any great change in the government's position so far".

"I'm waiting to see the red lines move," he added.

Meanwhile, EU members, who must give unanimous backing to any further Brexit delay, are growing increasingly impatient at the dysfunction in Westminster.

They could offer just a shorter postponement - or a longer period of up to a year.

Whether Britain will have left the bloc by then is uncertain.

Even those of May's Conservative colleagues who back her deal have denounced any outreach to Labour, while the most hardline Brexiteers remain implacably opposed to her deal.

Reports in Britain's Sunday newspapers said Tory MPs would try to oust May if Britain had to contest European Parliament elections in late May as part of a lengthy Brexit delay.

But Finance Minister Philip Hammond, who backed Remain in Britain's 2016 referendum and is seen as favoring as soft a Brexit as possible, urged his divided party to show flexibility.

"We should be open to listen to suggestions that others have made and some people in the Labour Party are making other suggestions," he said.

Labour is pushing for a much closer post-Brexit alliance with the EU, including participation in a customs union.

May has previously dismissed the idea because it bars Britain from striking its own trade deals with global giants such as China and the United States.

But the opposition party is also facing internal division on the issue.

Eighty Labour MPs wrote to Corbyn on Saturday urging him to secure a guarantee of a second referendum in any Brexit deal he reaches with May.

Agence France-presse

(China Daily 04/08/2019 page12)