UK One Step Closer To Brexit After Members Of Parliament Approve Bill

HuffPost UK has been told by senior Government sources that the week of March 27th is now the period when Article 50 will be triggered.

Prime Minister Theresa May is facing increasing pressure from her own party in the run-up to triggering Article 50. “That makes preparing for “no deal” all the more essential”, he added.

The committee of MPs from all political parties highlighted disagreement over Britain’s “exit bill” – estimated by some European Union officials to total €60 billion – as well as uncertainty over post-Brexit rights of British citizens in Europe and European Union citizens in the United Kingdom, as major stumbling blocks that could cause negotiations to drag talks beyond the two-year limit.

May has said she will trigger Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty by the end of this month.

“But attaching conditions to a bill that simply allows the Prime Minister to start the process of implementing the referendum result is emphatically not the way to do it”.

One would give Parliament a “meaningful” vote on the divorce deal, while the other guarantees protections for European Union nationals living in Britain.

Despite passionate arguments from Nick Clegg, accusing the Government of “sleight of hand”, and from Anna Soubry, who said – “I’m sorry I thought we lived in a democracy” – that MPs should have a say if there is no Brexit deal, the Government got its way in the Commons.

Amid speculation she could do that as early as Tuesday, May spokesman James Slack repeated the government’s position that it would trigger Article 50 by the end of March. Two ministers are believed to have cancelled foreign trips.

MPs are expected to reject the amendments tonight – but some Tories are still concerned about the alterations.

Conservative Brexit minister Lord Bridges defended the decision to give full authority over the terms of leaving the European Union to the prime minister: “It is the culmination of a long democratic process, a process started by the people at the last election, endorsed by this house in an act of parliament, and then voted for by the people at the referendum itself”, he said. “They are absolutely determined in their mind that this is not going to go wrong”. It comes after a committee of MPs warned that failure to put a back-up strategy in place would be a “serious dereliction of duty”.

However, Davis insisted in a Sunday BBC interview that it was “not remotely likely” that there would be a complete breakdown in negotiations: “The simple truth is, we have been planning for the contingency, all the various outcomes, all the possible outcomes”.

Pro-EU lawmakers accused the government and Brexit-backing lawmakers of running roughshod over the concerns of the 48 percent of Britons who voted to stay in the EU.

“All we have heard from the government so far is that if there is no deal, they are prepared to “break the British economic model”. That’s my real fear”.

Mr Davis stressed the co-operation between the British and Irish governments.

Mr Davis said the two amendments were unnecessary – because the Government had already guaranteed them verbally.

‘I don’t want Brexit, I think it’s bad, I think we’ll regret it, but that’s the way it is’.