Prime Minister Theresa May's cabinet has backed her latest plan for Britain to leave the European Union ahead of what is expected to be her final attempt to win parliamentary approval for her Brexit deal.
May was scheduled to outline her plan in a speech outside Downing Street later on Tuesday, her office said, after lawmakers in parliament's elected main house, the Commons, rejected her deal three times.
May agreed with senior members of her Conservative party last week to set a timetable to step down as party leader once parliament has voted on her EU Withdrawal Agreement Bill in early June.
Writing in the pro-Conservative Sunday Times newspaper, she promised a "bold, new offer" in her latest Brexit plan.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond, who also attended the cabinet meeting, warned his eurosceptic colleagues earlier not to follow Britain's "populist right" by promoting the idea that leaving the EU without a deal is the only "truly legitimate Brexit."
"To advocate for no deal is to hijack the result of the [2016 Brexit] referendum and in doing so knowingly to inflict damage on our economy and our living standards," Hammond said in advance excerpts from a speech to the Confederation of British Industry on Tuesday evening.
The BBC and other media quoted him as saying he would push for a Brexit deal to "protect jobs, businesses and future prosperity".
"We need to be clear, that if we do not resolve this issue in the next few weeks, there is a real risk of a new prime minister abandoning the search for a deal, and shifting towards seeking a damaging no-deal exit as a matter of policy," Hammond said.
May held six weeks of talks with the main opposition Labour party on a possible compromise to help push the Brexit deal through parliament, but the two sides announced on Friday that the talks had ended.
May blamed the collapse on Labour's failure to find a "common position" on Brexit, particularly its division over whether it should back a second referendum on leaving the EU.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the talks were undermined by "the increasing weakness and instability" of May's government.
Labour's shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry on Tuesday dismissed May's latest attempt to win parliamentary approval for her Brexit deal as "political theatre."
"It's almost like she is setting up her own political version of the last rites," Thornberry told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"She cannot realistically expect to see this get through [parliament] without fundamental changes and we are not going to see fundamental changes, from everything I hear," she said.
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