UK Prime Minister Theresa May is due to return to the parliament today to set out her Plan B on Brexit. The center of focus is her amendments regarding the Irish border backstop. May is trying to put up something that’s, at the very least, acceptable to her fellow Conservatives and Northern Ireland ally DUP. But the Guardian reported that no solutions were found so far during the conference call with the Cabinet on Sunday evening. The consensus was only to renew efforts to find acceptable changes to the backstop arrangement with the EU, without any specifics.
Trade Minister Liam Fox warned over the weekend that “failure to deliver Brexit would produce a yawning gap between parliament and the people, a schism in our political system with unknowable consequences”. And, that could trigger a “a political tsunami”. And, he added that “Parliament has not got the right to hijack the Brexit process because Parliament said to the people of this country: ‘we make a contract with you, you will make the decision and we will honour it'”.
Opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn reiterated the call for May to rule out no-deal Brexit. He said in a statement that “We’re ready to talk to the government and others in parliament about a sensible alternative plan, but not while Theresa May is wasting 171,000 pounds an hour of taxpayers’ money on dangerous and unnecessary no-deal brinkmanship.” And, “If the prime minister is serious about finding a solution that can command support in parliament and bring our country together, she must listen to the majority of MPs, as well as members of her own cabinet, and take ‘no deal’ off the table.”
