Now Parliament is expected to vote on whether it wants to leave the EU without a deal on March 29 — or ask for a deadline extension.
Theresa May’s Brexit deal has been defeated — again.
The UK Parliament voted Tuesday, 242 to 391, against the British prime minister’s proposed agreement, rejecting it with less than three weeks to go before the Brexit deadline of March 29, 2019.
The outcome wasn’t totally shocking, as May basically put forward the same deal that members of Parliament (MPs) rejected in January. She was unable to win major concessions from the European Union on the agreement, specifically when it came to the “Irish backstop,” a guarantee that a “hard” border won’t be put in place between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland when the EU and UK break up. The EU did offer some last-minute legal assurances that the backstop would be temporary, but this did not really alter the terms of the backstop and the Brexit agreement.
May’s loss is not as dramatic as the previous vote in January, when Parliament rejected her Brexit deal by 230 votes — the worst defeat for the British government in modern history. But it’s still humiliating, and almost guarantees that May won’t make a third attempt to get this deal passed before March 29. And it leaves the UK without a clear path forward.
This is also just the beginning of what could be a wild week in Westminster. May promised two additional votes on Brexit if Parliament once again voted down the agreement. The first of these is set for Wednesday, when MPs will vote on whether to leave the EU on March 29 without a deal — basically a self-inflicted “no-deal Brexit” that means the UK would crash out of the bloc without any transition period, to potentially chaotic consequences.
