Theresa May to beg EU leaders for Brexit delay after speaker’s bombshell vote ban leaves British cabinet in ‘crisis’

British Prime Minister Theresa May will be forced to write to EU leaders on Wednesday and beg them to delay Brexit, with her cabinet deadlocked over the best way out of what Downing Street now concedes is a “crisis”.

The government had maintained until the last possible moment that Brexit could go ahead as planned on March 29 or after a brief “technical extension”. But after Speaker John Bercow ruled that May could not put her deal to parliament unchanged for a third “meaningful vote”, her spokesman conceded it was now too late to leave with a deal.

He said the prime minister would write to the European council president, Donald Tusk, to ask for an extension to Article 50, before EU leaders meet in Brussels on Thursday. He declined to say how long a delay she would request, or for what purpose, simply insisting: “You’re going to have to wait for that letter to be published.”

Asked whether May agreed with the solicitor general, Robert Buckland, who described the situation after Bercow’s ruling on Monday as a “constitutional crisis”, her spokesman said: “If you were to look back at the speech the prime minister gave, just before meaningful vote two, she said that if MPs did not support meaningful vote two we would be in a crisis. Events yesterday tell you that that situation has come to pass.”

Ministers discussed Brexit for about 90 minutes at what several sources said was a testy cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

Insiders said opinion was more or less evenly divided, between those who favoured requesting a short, three-month extension, leaving in place the prospect of a no-deal Brexit in the summer, and those who want to see a much longer delay. Several sources said ministers emerged from cabinet unclear about what May’s personal position was on the best way forward.