With her tail firmly between her legs, Theresa May is to go back to the European Union in a bid to renegotiate her Brexit plan.
After cancelling the meaningful vote May made a statement to the House of Commons admitting the government did not have the numbers to get it through.
The prime minister said she believed there was ‘a majority to be won’ in the Commons on her deal, if she is able to ‘secure additional reassurance on the backstop’.
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May said the fundamental question for MPs to answer was: ‘Does this House want to deliver Brexit?’ If so, she said that they needed to ask themselves whether they were willing to make compromises.
She added that it was an ‘inescapable fact’ that the Northern Ireland/Ireland border would become the external EU border on March 30.
She told the Commons: ‘The challenge this poses must be met, not with rhetoric, but with real and workable solutions.
‘Businesses operate across that border, people live their lives crossing and recrossing it every day.
‘I have been there and spoken to some of those people, they do not want their every-day lives to change as a result of the decision we have taken. They do not want a return to a hard border.
‘If this House cares about preserving our Union it must listen to those people because our Union will only endure with their consent.’
Attacking the prime minister for excluding her own Brexit secretaries from negotiations and not listening to MPs, Jeremy Corbyn said May must listen or go.
He said: ‘It’s not only possible but necessary that this House debates the negotiating mandate the PM takes to Brussels – there’s no point at all this PM bringing back the same deal again which is clearly not supported by this House.
‘We’re now on our third Brexit secretary and it appears each and every one has been excluded from these vital negotiations.
‘We were promised a precise and substantive document and got a 26-page wishlist and they have become the first government in British history to be held in contempt of parliament.
‘The government is in disarray, uncertainty is building, uncertainty is building for business, people are in despair at the state of these failed negotiations and concerned about what it means for their jobs and communities – and the fault of that lies solely at the door of this shambolic government.’
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