British Prime Minister Theresa May’s top government officials and lawyers headed towards Brussels on Tuesday, for a last-ditch bid to secure changes to May’s proposed Brexit deal which needed to get pass through the United Kingdom (UK) parliament and to ensure smooth Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union (EU). Britain is due to leave the bloc in 24 days.
According to Reuters news reports, May charged her team, Brexit minister Stephen Barclay and attorney general Geoffrey Cox, with securing the changes to Irish backstop – an insurance policy to prevent installation of “hard border” between EU member Ireland and UK province of Northern Ireland – if future trading cooperation falls short.
Barclay and Cox will have a meeting with the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier and other officials from the EU today, seeking to construct what May’s group call “progress” in dialogues in order to reach an agreement ruling out Britain’s departure from the bloc without any deal.
While describing the situation “transformed in a positive direction” since last month, foreign minister Jeremy Hunt told BBC radio, “We all want to leave at the end of this month and it depends how quickly we can get a deal through.”
He asserted: “Our ask of the EU is an important ask … but it is one ask and it’s a simple one. We need substantive changes that will allow the attorney general to change his advice to the government that says that, at the moment, theoretically, we could be trapped in the backstop indefinitely.”
May has suffered much while convincing the bloc that she can get a deal through the deeply divided parliament in London.
She has already offered lawmakers the chance to seek to prevent a departure without a deal and to delay Brexit if parliament rejects the deal in a vote she has promised to hold by March 12.
Both the EU and British officials said any delay would not be lengthy, probably for some few months.
Hunt said, “How we get there is something we’re prepared to be flexible about. But the crucial thing that we are looking for is to see whether Geoffrey Cox is going to be able to change his advice to the government.”