UK PM urged to set her own exit date to get Brexit deal

British Prime Minister Theresa May reacts after tellers announced the results of the vote Brexit deal in Parliament earlier in March – Reuters 

Reuters: British Prime Minister Theresa May was under pressure yesterday to give a date for leaving office as the price to bring Brexit-supporting rebel lawmakers in her party behind her twice-defeated EU divorce treaty.

At one of the most important junctures for the country in at least a generation, British politics was at fever pitch and, nearly three years since the 2016 EU membership referendum, it was still unclear how, when or if Brexit will ever take place.

With May humiliated and weakened, ministers lined up to insist she was still in charge and to deny a reported plot to demand she name a date to leave office at a cabinet meeting at 1000 GMT yesterday.

“Time’s up, Theresa,” Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper said in a front page editorial. It said her one chance of getting the deal approved by Parliament was to name a date for her departure.

“I hope that the Cabinet will tell the Prime Minister the game is up,” Conservative lawmaker Andrew Bridgen who supports Brexit told Sky News.

“The Prime Minister does not have the confidence of the parliamentary party. She clearly doesn’t have the confidence of the Cabinet and she certainly doesn’t have the confidence of our members out there in the country,” he said.

Ministers will discuss at 0900 GMT how to address Parliament’s attempts to take control of Brexit before a meeting of May’s Cabinet team, a Government source said.

The UK, which voted 52-48% to leave the EU in the referendum, remains deeply divided over Brexit.

Just 24 hours after hundreds of thousands of people marched through London on Saturday to demand another referendum, May called rebel lawmakers to her Chequers residence on Sunday in an attempt to find a way to break the deadlock.

“The meeting discussed a range of issues, including whether there is sufficient support in the Commons to bring back a meaningful vote (for her deal) this week,” a spokesman for May’s Downing Street office said.

Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Steve Baker attended along with Ministers David Lidington and Michael Gove who had been reportedly lined up as caretaker prime ministers. They were forced on Sunday to deny they wanted May’s job.