May presses on with parliament Brexit vote as lawmakers urge her to get a better deal

LONDON: Britain’s Brexit minister insisted a crucial vote on Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal would go ahead after a newspaper reported on Sunday that she planned to delay it and make a last-minute dash to Brussels to seek a better offer.
Several pro-Brexit former government ministers on Sunday piled pressure on May to go back to the European Union and renegotiate a deal that has won little support among lawmakers both in her own Conservatives and opposition parties.
May’s deal looks set to be rejected by parliament on Tuesday, a decision that would throw plans for Britain’s exit from the EU into turmoil and leave her own political future hanging in the balance.
The Sunday Times reported May was expected to announce on Monday that she was delaying the vote to head to Brussels to make a final appeal to the EU to improve Britain’s exit deal.
“The vote is on Tuesday, that is what we are focused on,” Brexit minister Stephen Barclay told BBC TV on Sunday.
“The risk for those who say simply go back and ask again, the risk is that isn’t necessarily a one way street, the French the Spanish and others will turn round, if we seek to reopen the negotiation, and ask for more,” he added.
Barclay said Britain would enter “uncharted waters” if it loses the vote, but May could stay on as prime minister.
There has been speculation May might use an EU summit on Dec. 13-14 to press for changes to the deal.
The strongest opposition centres around the so-called backstop, an insurance policy designed to prevent a hard border between EU member Ireland and British-ruled Northern Ireland.
Brexit supporters and May’s nominal allies in Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party say it could leave Britain forced to accept EU regulations indefinitely, or Northern Ireland treated differently from the rest of the United Kingdom.
EU supporters say Britain would become little more than a rule-taker, offering the worst of all worlds.
Several lawmakers, including the DUP’s leader in the British parliament, Nigel Dodds, former Brexit minister Dominic Raab and former work and pensions minister Esther McVey, on Sunday called for May to go back to Brussels and seek to renegotiate the deal.
Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, a leading Brexit campaigner, said lawmakers on all sides were united against the backstop and losing the vote in parliament would give May a mandate to ask the EU to remove it from the deal. Agencies