Theresa May under fire as MPs move to block no-deal Brexit

It’s been a long day in Westminster, where lawmakers have voted by a majority of one to effectively rule out a no-deal Brexit in the near-term.

If Theresa May can’t salvage her Withdrawal Agreement in the coming days, Britain now looks to be headed for a longer delay to its departure from the EU.

We’re bringing our live coverage from London to a close. Read more about the bill’s passage and the events of the day here.

Responding to the passage of her bill, Labour MP Yvette Cooper said: “The House has tonight voted again to make clear the real concern there would be about a chaotic and damaging no deal.”

“It’s really important to say how welcome it was this this has been a really considered and thoughtful debate,” she added. “I am sure that we will be very keen to work with the government to make sure that this legislation progresses in a way that is sensible.” The bill must still be passed by the House of Lords for it to become law.

Hardline Brexiteer Mark Francois then made a point of order. “It’s difficult to argue that you’ve had an extremely considered debate when you’ve rammed the bill through the house of Commons in barely four hours,” he said. “That is a constitutional outrage.”

“It went through in the end by one vote,” he added. “That to me does not represent the long-term settled will of the House of Commons.”

For the second time today, the bill to block a no-deal Brexit passed by one vote.

Its final reading passed by 313 votes to 312.

Earlier in the day, it also proceeded to a second reading by one vote.

Parliament has approved a bill that effectively rules out a no-deal Brexit by forcing the government to seek an extension from the EU if it cannot pass a divorce plan by April 12.

The passage of the bill will enrage hardline Brexiteers in the Conservative Party, and sets Britain on course for a long Brexit extension if May cannot salvage her Withdrawal Agreement in the coming days.

The full list of amendments to Yvette Cooper’s bill have been voted on, and lawmakers are now walking through the lobbies to cast their vote on the main bill.

A reminder: if it succeeds, the bill would take a no-deal Brexit off the table by forcing Theresa May to seek an extension to the process if she cannot pass her Withdrawal Agreement in the coming days.

Read why that’s a big deal here.

Thursday’s newspapers are predictably focused on Theresa May’s crunch talks with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

The Brexit-supporting Daily Telegraph claims Corbyn is now “in the Brexit driving seat” after May agreed to negotiations on a compromise deal with the opposition leader.

The Metro goes with the same picture of Corbyn, along with a photo of May in the back seat of a car. “It’s Good to Talk,” their headline reads.

The i, meanwhile, focuses on the growing calls for a second referendum, after Labour’s shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry urged fellow MPs to back a second vote.

The Daily Express tabloid focuses on the fury coming from Conservative hardliners, following a day in which two ministers quit the government over May’s discussions with Corbyn.

Any further delay to Brexit will inevitably be long and the UK will have to prepare to hold European elections if it is sought, Theresa May’s Chancellor Philip Hammond has told ITV News’ Robert Peston.

But Hammond suggested that an extension – which Britain will have to request if Cooper’s bill succeeds and May cannot pass her deal by April 12 – could be cut short when Britain is ready to depart.

He said it was important “we have absolute clarity that as soon as we’ve done the deal, we are able to bring that extension to an end,” adding that “it’s less about the nominal time” of the extension and more about how easily Britain can halt it and exit the EU.

Any extension to Brexit, along with the terms of the extension, will have to be approved by the EU.

Hammond also repeated his suggestion that a second, confirmatory referendum is “credible.”

“It’s well known that this is one of the issues that’s been debated,” he said. “It’s a perfectly credible proposition. Some ideas have been put forward which are not deliverable, they’re not negotiable,” but a second vote “deserves” to be voted on, he added.

An amendment on Yvette Cooper’s bill, put down by the Government itself, has been crushed by lawmakers, as voting on amendments continues.

Theresa May’s government has already made a habit of suffering defeats in Parliament, but this huge loss – by 400 votes to 220 – suggests that Cooper’s main bill has a healthy chance of passing.

The amendment attempted to prevent Cooper’s bill from limiting the powers of a minister to seek or agree an extension of the Brexit process – essentially defeating the purpose of the bill itself. It had been tabled by Brexit Secretary, Stephen Barclay.

Lawmakers are voting on Labour MP Yvette Cooper’s bill to take a no deal Brexit off the table, and to force Theresa May to seek an extension to the process if she cannot pass her Withdrawal Agreement in the coming days.

Results of the main vote, as well as on a series of amendments, will be announced soon.

Nick Boles, the former Conservative MP who dramatically quit his party on Monday after his plan for a softer Brexit was voted down in the Commons, is clearly feeling liberated after giving up the party whip.

Boles has claimed on Twitter that Robbie Gibb, Theresa May’s director of communications, is set on undoing the prime minister’s efforts to find a Brexit compromise plan with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

“I am no longer a member of the Conservative Party. So I can be blunt where previously I might have been discreet. The PM’s head of communications Robbie Gibb is a hard Brexiter who wants to destroy the PM’s new search for a cross party compromise.

“The Prime Minister would do well to tell Mr Gibb to get back in his box - or go back to the BBC,” Boles added, referring to Gibb’s former employer.

Tonight’s vote is important because if the so-called ‘Cooper Bill’ passes, it effectively takes a no-deal Brexit off of the table.

The bill being debated in the House of Commons right now would, if passed, force Theresa May to request an extension to article 50 of her choosing, but beyond the current date of April 12. While the Prime Minister has already announced that she intends to do this, the Cooper Bill would allow MPs to change that date.

Further to that, the bill – proposed by Labour MP Yvette Cooper – also says that if the EU agrees to an extension but suggests a different date to that selected by either the Prime Minister or MPs, then May must immediately bring a fresh motion back to the Commons to reflect that.

It’s all a little fiddly, but with so little time left, it paves the way to an extension that would require the UK to remain in the EU for a long time. And, as we wrote earlier, that opens a whole new can of worms.

With everything else that is currently going on with Brexit – from May and Corbyn trying to reach compromise to the President of the EU Commission, Jean Claude Juncker, saying that without a fresh way forward, the UK would not be granted a short extension – it’s becoming clearer by the day that May is clinging onto Brexit by her fingernails.

A senior member of Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet has urged lawmakers in the party to insist that any Brexit deal is put to the public in a confirmatory second referendum.

Emily Thornberry, the shadow Foreign Secretary, wrote to members of the shadow cabinet ahead of an emergency meeting on Wednesday evening, insisting they put the issue to a vote.

“If we look like reaching any other decision than confirmatory vote that would be in breach of the decision made unanimously by Conference in Liverpool and overwhelmingly supported by our members,” wrote Thornberry, who was unable to attend the session, in a letter obtained by CNN. “It needs to be put to a vote by the Shadow Cabinet.”

“The Tory Cabinet had that kind of vote yesterday after their eight-hour discussion yesterday so I think it is the least we should be doing after the one-hour discussion this evening,” she said.

Thornberry suggested that if the party voted to endorse a referendum, MPs who oppose the plan would still be given leeway to state their position publicly.

Labour MP Yvette Cooper’s bill to rule out no deal has moved forward to a third debate and vote, after lawmakers supported its progress by 315 votes to 310.

Its first reading scraped through by 311 votes to 310, but it has picked up four more backers to increase its majority.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn hinted that Theresa May intends to put a Brexit deal to the House of Commons in a vote next week.

Speaking after his meeting with May, Corbyn said of a Brexit delay: “If it goes beyond the 22nd of May then clearly it does involve European elections, which the government absolutely does not want to be involved in. They made that very, very clear … and that is why she is very keen to get a vote through the House next week”

Corbyn also said he raised the possibility of a confirmatory referendum on a Brexit deal, but was unclear on how firmly he pursued the option.

“It was raised by me at the beginning of the meeting. I said, ‘Look, it is the policy of our party that we would want to pursue to option of a public vote to prevent crashing out or prevent leaving on a bad deal.’”

“There was no agreement reached on that, we just put it there as one of the issues that the Labour Party conference voted on last year,” he added.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has hinted his talks with Theresa May didn’t quite go as he had hoped, calling the meeting “useful but inconclusive.”

“We had a discussion and there hasn’t been as much change as I expected but we are continuing to have some discussions tomorrow morning to explore some of the technical issues,” Corbyn said, according to the Press Association.

“The meeting was useful but inconclusive,” he added.

Corbyn said he advocated Labour’s Brexit position during the talks. “We want to achieve a customs union with the European Union, we want to have access to the market and, in particular, we discussed the dynamic regulatory alignment that is guaranteeing European regulations as a minimum on the on the environment as well as consumer and employment rights,” he said.

Notably, that synopsis of the conversation doesn’t include any mention of a confirmatory referendum on any Brexit deal, for which many in his party have been pressing.

Labour MP Yvette Cooper is addressing the House, after lawmakers voted by a majority of one to move forward on her bill that would take no-deal off the table.

“We have put forward this bill … for fear of the damage that no-deal would do to all of our constituencies,” Cooper says.

She acknowledges that some people in Britain want a no-deal Brexit, and they want it as fast as possible. But she adds on the prospect: “It will hit other people’s lives, and it is not fair.”

Responding to a question on why the period for debate and votes on the bill has been compressed to just a few days, Cooper says such a timeline is necessary given the looming Brexit deadline. “This is a tight timetable for this bill because this is a tight timetable for this House, facing the deadline of 12th of April,” she says.

“I could never have imagined when we started these debates … that nine days from Brexit Day, nobody knows what’s going to happen,” she adds.

Opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had a “constructive” meeting with British Prime Minister Theresa May on Brexit on Wednesday, a Labour Party spokesperson said, and further discussions between the two sides will take place over the coming days.

Here’s the moment that John Bercow, Speaker of the House of Commons, dramatically cast his vote that blocked further indicative votes on the Brexit process, under a process controlled by lawmakers.

Bercow said it was the first time that a Speaker had cast a tiebreak since 1993 – ironically, that was a matter related to the Maastricht treaty, another controversial European Union issue.

Lawmakers have approved a debate for Labour MP Yvette Cooper’s motion that forces the government to request an extension to the Brexit process if they cannot pass a deal by April 12. It outlaws a no-deal option.

The vote was 312-311 in favor – a majority of just one.

The Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, has blocked another round of indicative votes planned by lawmakers for Monday. Lawmakers were tied 310-310, and the Speaker said important decisions should not be taken without a majority. He cast his tiebreaking vote with the noes. “It’s not for the chair to create a majority that doesn’t exist,” he said.

That doesn’t mean more indicative votes won’t happen – the government might offer them anyway.