London [UK]: British Prime Minister Theresa May on Thursday (local time) suffered yet another embarrassing defeat as parliamentarians voted down her Brexit plan ‘B’, that allows the United Kingdom to officially leave the European Union.
May lost the vote by 303-258, weeks after she asserted that she had a “substantial majority” of MPs in favour of her Brexit plan.
The stakes are high, as the UK is slated to leave the EU on March 29 with no deal in sight due to the British Parliament rejecting the previously negotiated treaty with the bloc by a huge margin, CNN reported.
Last month, May’s Brexit deal was voted down by the MPs at the House of Commons by a resounding majority of 230. The deal was voted down by 432 votes to 202, the worst defeat for any sitting government in the UK. Around 118 Conservative Party MPs voted against the withdrawal agreement.
Subsequently, she presented an alternate path in a bid to secure Parliamentary support for a Brexit deal. With the agreement now rejected, the British Prime Minister is now under pressure to push her deal forward. The EU has already reiterated earlier that the deal would not be renegotiated again.
May has also survived two no-confidence motions moved against her, although uncertainty looms over the status of the UK leaving the European bloc.
May, who dismissed the prospects of a second Brexit referendum, has been pushing for the Brexit deal to be accepted by the UK Parliament. She has repeatedly stated that “this is a Brexit that delivers.”
In 2016, over 50 per cent of the UK electorate voted to leave the EU, following which the British government had triggered Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, beginning the country’s process of exiting the European bloc.
According to the withdrawal agreement, the UK is scheduled to leave the bloc on March 29, 2019, after which it will move into a 21-month long transitional period with the EU.
[source_without_link]ANI[/source_without_link]