Theresa May left open the possibility of delaying a crunch vote in parliament on her Brexit deal next week.
Asked repeatedly in an interview with the BBC’s Today Program about reports that senior Cabinet colleagues are calling on her to delay a vote that she looks almost certain to lose — potentially by a large margin — May said she was sticking to her plan.
“We’re in the middle of five days of debate in parliament which will lead to a vote on this issue,” she said, adding, “I am leading up to a vote on Tuesday.” But she did not definitively rule out a postponement.
Over 100 of May’s own backbenchers have said they will vote against the deal, which took 20 months of painstaking negotiation to agree with Brussels.
The prime minister also confirmed that she was in talks with skeptical MPs about giving parliament a say on whether the U.K. enters the Northern Ireland backstop. This is an arrangement written into the legally binding Withdrawal Agreement that is designed to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland.
“The backstop is an integral part of the Withdrawal Agreement but the backstop would be an integral part of any Withdrawal Agreement and of any deal negotiated with the European Union,” the prime minister said.
May repeated that her intention was not to use the backstop, but said MPs could be given a choice about whether to remain in a transition period (a move that she acknowledged would entail extra payments into the EU budget) or enter the backstop. She also appeared to suggest that MPs could be given a role in leaving the backstop.
“I’m talking to colleagues about how we can look [at] parliament having a role about coming into that and coming out of it,” she said. But May did not address the situation where there is no alternative to the backstop and a refusal to enter it would mean parliament effectively tearing up an international treaty.
May was asked repeatedly what her Plan B was if she lost the vote, but refused to say. “That question is not for me. That question is for those who want to oppose this deal,” she said, adding that there are three options on the table: “There’s a deal, no deal or no Brexit.”
At times, the frustration of a seemingly fruitless effort to sell her deal to MPs seemed to show. Asked whether there should be a second referendum (something she has consistently opposed as a betrayal of Leave voters), she told interviewer John Humphrys, “You may have spent a lifetime in journalism asking people the same question over and over expecting a different answer, but I don’t think it is right for parliament to do that.”
Later, when he suggested she was resigned to losing the vote on Tuesday, she said: “I haven’t said that John at all. Don’t put words into [my mouth].”
And she rejected that idea that a key procedural vote earlier this week had effectively taken the possibility of a no-deal Brexit off the table she countered, “The only way to take no deal off the table is to have a deal and to agree a deal.”