Brexit could be delayed until June as Theresa May launches bid for third ‘meaningful’ vote on deal

Tory rebels help to pass vote demanding prime minister rules out no-deal Brexit

Britain’s departure from the EU looks set to be delayed until June after Theresa May launched a desperate last-ditch bid to make MPs vote on her Brexit deal a third time.

On a farcical night in Westminster, Ms May was forced to concede she would go to Brussels and ask for the short extension – but only if the Commons approves her deal next week.

If MPs reject her deal at the third time of asking, she warned that a longer extension would leave Britain at the mercy of EU demands for new concessions and mean the UK must take part in European elections in May.

The prime minister was pushed to make the offer after a chaotic night for the government which ended with Tory rebels – including several cabinet ministers – helping to pass a vote demanding a no-deal Brexit be completely ruled out.

The move is Ms May’s final gambit as she scrambles to cajole her party behind her deal, with reports that some hardline Eurosceptic Tories were last night changing their minds to consider backing her out of fear that Remainer MPs and the EU will water down Brexit.

The growing possibility of Brexit being taken off the table altogether grew as a cross-party group of Remainers formed plans to amend Ms May’s motion on Thursday, to allow the Commons to vote on alternative courses potentially including a Final Say referendum.

With just 15 days to go until the UK is supposed to drop out of the EU, Ms May will on Thursday put a motion in front of the house stating that the government will “agree with the European Union an extension” to the Article 50 negotiating period, so delaying Brexit.

The motion states that if MPs finally back her deal by 20 March she will seek “a one-off extension ... for a period ending on 30 June 2019” in order to pass necessary Brexit legislation, but if they do not the EU will demand a longer extension, a change in negotiating stance and for the UK to elect new members of the European parliament.

The Independent understands the third vote on Ms May’s deal could take place as early as Monday, leaving time for a fourth attempt before 20 March if it is defeated again.

Theresa May’s spokesperson said: “The house needs to understand that if it’s not willing to support a deal in the coming days and not willing to support leaving without a deal by 29 March, it’s suggesting there has to be a much longer extension.”

The house needs to understand that if it’s not willing to support a deal in the coming days and not willing to support leaving without a deal by 29 March, it’s suggesting there has to be a much longer extension

Theresa May’s spokesperson

On Wednesday night the government lost a vote on whether or not to take a no-deal Brexit off the table, in the end being beaten by 321 votes to 278 – a majority of 43.

The night began with Ms May proposing her own weakly-worded motion saying the house wanted to rule out no deal, but accepting that it is the default legal position that the UK leaves the EU on 29 March if no other deal is arranged

It was an attempt to prevent Tories from backing a more strongly-worded cross-party plan to amend her motion, in a way that made it rule out no deal more clearly at any point in the future.

But with the support of Labour and a handful of rebel Tories, the amendment to Ms May’s motion was passed by a majority of four, meaning government whips were then forced to tell loyal Conservative MPs to vote against the amended plan in a bid to stop it tying the prime minister to a stronger rejection of a no-deal Brexit.

As confusion took hold in the voting lobbies around the Commons, it emerged that around a dozen ministers – including cabinet members Amber Rudd, David Gauke, Greg Clark and David Mundell – refused to back the whip’s orders and instead abstained.

The result does not change the fact that it is still the legal position that the UK should leave the EU on 29 March, but it makes the political pressure to either change that statute or delay Brexit irresistible.

Members of the Eurosceptic Tory European Research Group (ERG) were furious that Remainer ministers had defied the whip without being forced to resign, with some of the frontbenchers revealing later they had been told they would be able to abstain without facing sanction.

ERG vice-chair Mark Francois said: “Collective responsibility is disintegrating and we may as well tell the whip’s office to pack up and go home.”

As it emerged that Ms May would definitely seek a third attempt to pass her deal, he stubbornly refused to back it, saying it is “unacceptable”.

The ERG’s deputy-chair Steve Baker also stood in the Commons to vow he would still oppose the deal, but others in the group were starting to give way.

Senior figure Simon Clarke MP said: “There is a gun to my head. I think voters will appreciate that increasingly we are getting a very, very, very limited range of options left, if we want to actually honour the manifesto commitment to leave at all.

“It’s now effectively a bad Brexit deal or no Brexit, which is absolutely ghastly. It’s not what we should have done.”

Ms May’s hopes of eventually passing her deal were also buoyed after it emerged that her Northern Irish DUP allies, whose MPs prop up her slim Commons majority, agreed to hold talks on finding a way that they might support her plans.

One complicating factor could be speaker John Bercow who suggested he may seek to enforce Commons rules aimed at preventing a government from forcing MPs to vote on the same question over and over.

But a bigger threat could emerge on Thursday when MPs table amendments to her motion on seeking an extension to Article 50, with one likely to be backed by Labour’s Yvette Cooper and ex-Tory minister Oliver Letwin attempting to give the Commons an opportunity to have “indicative votes” on all the possible options to determine if anything has a majority.

The avenues that could be looked at include having a second referendum, leaving the EU but staying in a permanent customs union, or adopting the Norway model.