British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Brexit plans have been dealt a major blow after UK MPs voted to postpone a decision on whether to back his deal with the European Union.
And hundreds of thousands of anti-Brexit protesters gathered on the streets of London, an historic special session of Parliament was held to ratify the new Brexit deal.
Instead, MPs voted 322-306 to withhold their approval on the deal until legislation to implement it has been passed.
The vote aims to ensure that the UK can’t crash out of the EU without a divorce deal on the scheduled October 31 departure date.
British MPs will debate and vote on Monday on whether to approve Mr Johnson’s Brexit deal, House of Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg said.
“Monday’s business will now be a debate on a motion relating to Section 13 (1B) of the European Union Withdrawal Act 2018,” Mr Rees-Mogg said after the vote.
Section 13 (1B) covers the formal approval vote Parliament is required to hold in order to pass a deal.
Earlier, a defiant Mr Johnson said he will not negotiate a further delay to Britain’s departure from the EU.
The amendment to delay approval was put forward by Oliver Letwin, a former Conservative cabinet minister.
According to legislation passed earlier, the vote means Mr Johnson is obliged to write to the EU seeking a delay beyond Britain’s scheduled departure date of October 31.
But Mr Johnson has repeatedly vowed he will not do this and on Saturday he stuck to that line.
“I will not negotiate a delay with the EU and neither does the law compel me to do so,” the Prime Minister told parliament.
“I will tell our friends and colleagues in the EU exactly what I have told everyone else in the last 88 days that I have served as prime minister: that further delay would be bad for this country, bad for the European Union and bad for democracy,” he said.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn demanded the government delay Britain’s departure.
“The Prime Minister must now comply with the law,” Mr Corbyn told the House of Commons.
Mr Letwin’s amendment proposed that a decision on whether to back a Brexit deal be deferred until all the legislation needed to implement it has been passed through parliament.
Even though Mr Johnson believes this can be achieved by October 31, others think it would need a short “technical” delay in Britain’s departure from the EU.
A law passed by Mr Johnson’s opponents obliges him to ask the EU for a Brexit delay until January 31, 2020 if he could not secure approval for his deal by the end of Saturday.
“My aim is to ensure that Boris’s deal succeeds,” Mr Letwin said earlier.
But he said he wanted “an insurance policy which prevents the UK from crashing out on 31 October by mistake if something goes wrong during the passage of the implementing legislation”.
Three years after Britain voted 52-48 per cent to leave the European project, Johnson struck a divorce deal with the bloc in Brussels on Thursday.
-with AAP
The post UK MPs vote to delay a decision on Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal appeared first on The New Daily.
**Business and Marketing support on best price; Hit the link now----> http://bit.ly/2HsQmSi