Theresa May aims to break Brexit deadlock — but her plan B might look familiar

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By Rachel Elbaum

LONDON — Last week, Theresa May’s Brexit plan suffered the largest parliamentary defeat of any British prime minister. Her solution? To press ahead with largely the same plan — albeit with a few tweaks around the edges.

There are 67 days left until the U.K. is due to leave the European Union on March 29, and no agreement among lawmakers on how or even whether the country should leave.

The one certainty at the moment is that if lawmakers fail to agree to a plan, Britain will crash out of the bloc with no agreement on its trading relationship. In the event of a chaotic “no-deal” Brexit, the Bank of England has warned the economy could shrink by as much as 8 percent in about a year. It also estimated that the country’s GDP could be up to 10.5 percent lower by the end of 2023 than how the economy appeared to be heading before the 2016 referendum.

On Monday afternoon, May is due to announce her revised proposal.

Despite the unprecedented opposition to her plan — her deal was crushed 432 to 202 on Tuesday — some analysts believe May could eventually manage to get it through Parliament.

“The closer we get to the 29th of March, [lawmakers] might swing behind her. It is head-spinningly messy,” said Anand Menon, a professor of European politics and foreign affairs at King’s College London.

After the deal was thrown out last week, May said she would consult with lawmakers from all parties to find a new way forward. That hasn’t exactly worked out, and she now looks set to try to win over pro-Brexit hardliners within her party — who thought her proposal didn’t provide enough of a break from the E.U. — as well as members of the the Democratic Unionist Party, a small group of Northern Irish politician which props up the government.

More than one-third of lawmakers from May’s Conservative Party voted against her divorce proposal last week.

Meanwhile, other lawmakers are exploring ways to use parliamentary rules to wrestle control of the Brexit process away from May.

“No one here pays attention to procedure until you end up with this crunch and suddenly it matters a lot,” said David Howarth, a professor of law and public policy at the University of Cambridge, and a former member of Parliament.

Even if May wins support in Parliament for her plan B, the E.U. has consistently refused to renegotiate the withdrawal agreement.

source: nbcnews.com