Brexit vote: MPs tell May to reopen backstop clause

BRITISH MPs on Tuesday (29) instructed prime minister Theresa May to demand that Brussels replace the Irish border arrangement known as the "backstop", in a last-ditch attempt to renegotiate an exit treaty that the European Union says it will not change.

The amendment, put forward by influential Conservative MP Graham Brady, passed by 317 votes to 301, and is intended to strengthen the prime minister’s hand when she returns to Brussels to try to renegotiate - something the EU again ruled out within minutes of the vote.

With two months left until Britain is due by law to leave the EU, investors and allies have urged the British government to clinch a deal to allow an orderly exit from the club it joined in 1973.

"Tonight, a majority of honourable members have said they would support a deal with changes to the backstop," May said, only two weeks after her divorce deal was crushed in the biggest parliamentary defeat in modern British history.

"It is now clear that there is a route that can secure a substantial and sustainable majority in the house for leaving the EU with a deal," May said, adding she would seek "legally binding changes".

The amendment calls for the backstop to be replaced with unspecified "alternative arrangements" to avoid the reintroduction of border checks in Ireland and says parliament would support May's Brexit deal if this change were made.

However, Brussels has repeatedly said it does not want to reopen the treaty, which has been signed off by the other 27 EU leaders and has said the "backstop" is needed as a guarantee to ensure there can be no return to a hard border between Ireland and the British province of Northern Ireland.

Speaking immediately after the vote in the British parliament, a spokesman for European Council President Donald Tusk said the backstop was part of the withdrawal deal and was not up for negotiation.

“The Withdrawal agreement is and remains the best and only way to ensure an orderly withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union,” Tusk said via a spokesman.

“The backstop is part of the Withdrawal Agreement, and the Withdrawal Agreement is not open for renegotiation.”

Irish finance minister Paschal Donohoe on Tuesday said Ireland's view was "unchanged".

"The withdrawal treaty containing the backstop must be maintained," he said.

If there is no deal by February 13, the prime minister has promised to give MPs a chance to vote on what happens next on February 14.

MPs rejected two amendments setting out a path for parliament to prevent a no-deal exit if May cannot get a deal passed next month. However, they did later approve a symbolic proposal calling on the government to stop a potentially disorderly no-deal exit.

The so-called Spelman amendment, passed by 318 votes to 310, "rejects the United Kingdom leaving the European Union without a Withdrawal Agreement and a Framework for the Future Relationship".

It sends a signal that parliament as a whole opposes leaving the EU without a negotiated agreement, which will happen by default on March 29 if no alternative is agreed but does not compel the government to prevent such a departure or provide a mechanism for doing so.

Opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said he was willing to meet the prime minister to set out his party’s views on Brexit. He previously declined to meet the Conservative leader unless the option of a no deal Brexit was taken off the table.

Earlier in the evening, the French president Emmanuel Macron shared similar sentiments to Tusk, claiming the Brexit deal is the "best agreement possible and is not renegotiable.”

Macron urged the British government to “promptly” lay out to EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier "the next steps that will prevent an exit without an agreement, which nobody wants but for which we must all prepare ourselves".

In response to Tusk’s statement, Boris Johnson, the Brexiter former foreign secretary, said the two sides are in a negotiation, and it is “not surprising that the EU is at this point resisting compromise”.

Ahead of the vote, the prime minister acknowledged the opposition in Brussels to reopening the deal and said it "will not be easy" and accepted there was "limited appetite among our European partners" to changing the Brexit deal, which took almost two years to negotiate.

Speaking after a phone call with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, she said: "We have the chance to show the European Union what it will take to get a deal through this House of Commons. What it will take to move beyond the confusion, division and uncertainty that now hangs over us.”

Sunder Katwala, of British Future thinktank said on Twitter: “No Deal is bad enough to vote against it, but MPs "ruled in" No Deal tonight, on the theory that delaying Brexit is worse.”

He also expressed his view that a second referendum looked unlikely.

Labour MP Seema Malhotra said on Twitter: “A big night tonight as Parliament votes to say no to no deal. But no movement yet from the PM on renegotiating the future declaration or future framework which is key to knowing where our nation is going, not just what we are leaving.”

The Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Vince Cable, said MPs have given May contradictory instructions, voting against no deal, but then backing a negotiating position that will still deliver no deal.

He suggested May returning to the Commons on Wednesday (30) to make a statement explaining what the “alternative arrangements” to the backstop envisaged in the Brady amendment are.

“The government needs to put national unity first,” he said on social media.

Carolyn Fairbairn, the director of Confederation of British Industry (CBI), said it was a “deeply frustrating” day for business.

“Renegotiation is a throw-of-the-dice, it must succeed or fail fast,” she said. “Rejecting no deal is welcome but doesn’t get a deal.

“Until MPs can agree a solution, the threat of no deal will continue to drain money from the UK.”

(With agencies)