British PM to trigger Brexit without vote by lawmakers

Labour leadership contender Owen Smith has promised to attempt to block the triggering of formal negotiations to leave the European Union until there is a second referendum to approve the final Brexit deal.

Promising to block Article 50 in parliament, he said: “Under my leadership, Labour won’t give the Tories a blank cheque”.

According to the Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, each European Union member state can leave the bloc.

Lawyers from the Mishcon de Reya lawfirm are poised to challenge the government in the English High Court, arguing that May can not trigger Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty – the legal process for leaving the bloc – without the parliament authorising it.

Theresa May has been described as a “Tudor monarch” over her alleged plans to take Britain out of the European Union without a parliamentary vote on the matter.

Parliament could be sidelined by Theresa May over Brexit, w ith the Prime Minister reportedly planning to deny them a vote before formerly triggering the process of leaving the EU.

A group of lawyers has mounted a legal challenge in a bid to force May to hold a parliamentary vote.

Meanwhile, former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith has suggested Britain could rely on World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules to trade with the European Union after Brexit. He said Europeans want to negotiate in good faith, but that this is partly based on the UK’s promise to propose the specific plan to exit “reasonably quickly”.

“The prime minister has been absolutely clear that the British public have voted and now she will get on with delivering Brexit”, a Downing Street source told the paper. “She’s looked at the numbers and she knows she might not win a vote in parliament”.

However government lawyers are expected to say May can use the royal prerogative to start the two-year withdrawal, paving the way for Brexit in 2019.

Mr Smith has said that the British public have not voted on the terms of any post-Brexit deal, which remain unknown. If he was to become the opposition leader, he would, he said, “press for whatever final deal she, Boris Johnson, Liam Fox and David Davis come up with” to be put to the British people, either in a second referendum or at a general election.

While Iain Duncan Smith, the former Work and Pensions Secretary, has said that the Government needs to “get on” with triggering Article 50 amid signs of increasing splits among Conservative MPs.