{"id":38076,"date":"2019-03-30T12:25:40","date_gmt":"2019-03-30T12:25:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=38076"},"modified":"2019-03-30T12:25:40","modified_gmt":"2019-03-30T12:25:40","slug":"uks-theresa-may-ponders-fourth-vote-on-brexit-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=38076","title":{"rendered":"UK&#8217;s Theresa May ponders fourth vote on Brexit deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"body-200771816342556199\" readability=\"135.286071726\">\n<p class=\"speakable\"><span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/country\/united-kingdom.html\">United Kingdom<\/a>\u00a0Prime Minister\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/people\/theresa.html\">Theresa May<\/a>\u00a0hopes to bring her\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/events\/brexit.html\">Brexit<\/a>\u00a0deal back to parliament next week for a fourth attempt at gaining MPs&#8217; backing, British media reported.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\"><span>May will continue to seek support for her deal as MPs are set to hold another set of votes on various options on Monday, a government source told the BBC on Saturday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\"><span>Lawmakers rejected May&#8217;s Brexit deal for a third time on Friday, leaving Britain&#8217;s withdrawal from the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/organisations\/european-union.html\">European Union<\/a>\u00a0in turmoil on the day it was originally due to leave the bloc.<span class=\"apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><span>The UK is now set to exit on April 12 by legal default.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Several leave-supporting Conservative MPs who had twice rejected May&#8217;s deal, supported the agreement on Friday. But with the Labour Party and the Democratic Unionist Party opposed to the plan, a majority vote was unachievable.<\/p>\n<h2>Alternative plan<\/h2>\n<p><span>With parliament and the government deadlocked on May&#8217;s deal, it remains unclear how, when or even whether Britain will leave the EU.<span class=\"apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>But on Monday lawmakers will try to agree on an alternative Brexit plan that could command majority cross-party support.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The options that have so far gathered the most support involve closer ties to the EU and a second referendum.<span class=\"apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The chairman of May&#8217;s Conservative Party, Brandon Lewis, told\u00a0<\/span><span>Radio 4&#8217;s Today programme: &#8220;The government&#8217;s position is very clear &#8211; we do not support these options. The government&#8217;s position is we believe the best way to respect the referendum is to deliver the deal.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>He added that\u00a0<\/span><span>all options were on the table for how to get Britain out of its Brexit impasse.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Lewis said however that seeking a customs union with the European Union would be difficult\u00a0<\/span><span>and would go against the result of the referendum and Conservative\u00a0<\/span><span>pledges before the 2017 national election.<\/span><\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"imagecontainer item\" data-image-url=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/mritems\/Images\/2019\/3\/23\/bcca7a39c1904a7eb716422bda5d50c8_18.jpg\">\n<table class=\"image\" border=\"0\">\n<tbody readability=\"2\">\n<tr>\n<td><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/mritems\/Images\/2019\/3\/23\/bcca7a39c1904a7eb716422bda5d50c8_18.jpg\" border=\"0\"><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr readability=\"4\">\n<td class=\"caption\">Hundreds of thousands demonstrated in London last week, calling on the government to give Britons a vote on the final Brexit deal [Kevin Coombs\/Reuters]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><span>The BBC also reported that government officials had not ruled out the possibility of a run-off vote in parliament between the most popular option proposed by lawmakers and May&#8217;s deal.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span>Next steps<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span>While the UK is now scheduled to leave the bloc in two weeks, the government may seek a longer extension, although such a move would require Britain to contest the upcoming European Parliament elections. An extension would also need the unanimous support of all other 27 EU member states.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>EU leaders have said the UK would have to provide a clear strategy in order to secure a longer extension.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>This week, the British parliament held a series of non-binding votes on a number of alternative Brexit plans, in an attempt to see if a majority could be found for a new approach. Of the eight plans put to the vote, none won majority support.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>May said legislators would continue on Monday to try and &#8220;see if there is a stable majority for a particular alternative version of our future relationship with the EU&#8221;, adding that any plan would also require MPs to back the withdrawal agreement.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Tom Brake, a Liberal Democrat MP, told Al Jazeera that while May&#8217;s deal is &#8220;as dead as a dodo&#8221;, he was confident Parliament would take the initiative on breaking the Brexit impasse next week.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>&#8220;What happens on Monday is that process of Parliament taking control of this continues,&#8221; he said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>&#8220;We have a day booked, where what I expect to happen is that some of the options that were debated earlier in the week will be refined, perhaps joined together, and I think we will see a majority potentially emerge around one of those options.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<div data-embed-type=\"Brightcove\" data-embed-id=\"6020041370001\">\n<table class=\"in-article-item video Fullwidth\" border=\"0\">\n<tbody readability=\"1\">\n<tr>\n<td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr readability=\"3\">\n<td readability=\"5\">\n<p>Brexit fallout: Britain reacts to delayed exit<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>United Kingdom\u00a0Prime Minister\u00a0Theresa May\u00a0hopes to bring her\u00a0Brexit\u00a0deal back to parliament next week for a fourth attempt at gaining MPs&#8217; backing, British media reported.\u00a0 May will continue to seek support for her deal as MPs are set to hold another set of votes on various options on Monday, a government source told the BBC on Saturday.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":38077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}