EU dismay at May's humiliating defeat as Tory row descends into open warfare
Live updates from Westminster
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Your support makes all the difference.Theresa May has been at loggerheads with her ministers as several openly contradicted each other over the prospect of a no-deal Brexit.
After MPs refused to support the prime minister’s plan in her latest Commons defeat, EU ministers said it made the current situation even more difficult.
Andrea Leadsom, the commons leader, insisted the option of leaving without a deal remained on the table, but foreign office minister Alastair Burt insisted this was not possible.
A dozen or more ministers could quit if Ms May refuses to extend the Brexit negotiating period beyond 29 March and veers towards a no-deal scenario, former attorney general Dominic Grieve said.
Margot James became the latest minister to rule out remaining in the government if that situation occurred.
The digital minister told Channel 4 News: “I could not be part of a government that allowed this country to leave the European Union without a deal.” Downing Street insisted Ms May would continue with her negotiating strategy, with ministers dismissing yesterday’s vote as no more than a “hiccup”.
Here is how we covered the day’s events:
Countdown to Brexit: How many days left until Britain leaves the EU?
The Tory MP who claimed the UK received no aid from America’s famous Marshall Plan after the Second World War has finally admitted he was wrong and apologised.
More fall-out from today’s summit in Belfast. Sinn Fein has accused the government of indulging in a sham after the discussion on Stormont’s power-sharing crisis failed to find a way forward.
The party’s president Mary Lou McDonald claimed the talks involving the five main Stormont parties and UK and Irish governments were only called to give a false impression Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley was proactively trying to resolve the impasse.
“We are open to any credible proposition to restore power-sharing, but what we had today was not that,” she said after the 90-minute meeting.
Germany’s defence minister Ursula von der Leyen has said EU leaders are working on ways to co-operate with the UK after Brexit, the Deutsche Welle newspaper reports.
“We are working on a regulation — the so-called third-state regulation — that gives access to countries like our British friends, which we want to have in our European Defense Union,” she said. “This is the goal to have our British friends as close as possible.”
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