Theresa May pins hopes on getting EU to agree on 2021 Brexit deadline

Theresa May will ask the EU for a 2021 deadline to complete a final Brexit agreement in an effort to get MPs behind her March divorce deal.

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May after speaking during a press conference in Brussels last month during a European summit aimed at discussing a Brexit deal. Picture: John Thys/AFP

British Prime Minister Theresa May will ask Brussels to agree a 2021 deadline to complete the final Brexit agreement in a last-ditch effort to get MPs behind her divorce deal.

It is one of three elements of a package designed to address concerns that commitments to avoid a hard Irish border will shackle Britain to the EU bloc indefinitely.

The Conservative Prime Minister is due to update parliament on Wednesday before a vote that she has promised to hold on her deal next week. Britain is currently due to leave the EU on March 29, with or without an exit agreement.

Despite intense diplomacy over Christmas, however, she has little new to offer sceptics.

Nigel Dodds, Westminster leader of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, which helps keep the minority Conservatives in power, underlined the scale of her task in getting MPs to accept the backstop provisions when he called them “poison”.

Mrs May warned that the country would be in “uncharted territory” if MPs voted down the deal, as appears highly likely.

Her allies rejected suggestions that she could again delay the vote scheduled for January 15 but there were similar denials before last month’s vote was pulled.

Senior figures say that on this occasion Mrs May no longer faces the risk of a vote of no confidence by her party after surviving a challenge and buying herself a 12-month reprieve.

Downing Street aides also acknowledge that Brussels may refuse to act until parliament’s will has been tested.

Mrs May is nevertheless likely to make public her private demands in the coming days in an attempt to force the EU to engage further on the issue of the backstop.

She hinted at the strategy on Sunday as she acknowledged MPs’ concerns that her guarantee that the UK will mirror EU customs and rules while a final deal is negotiated “could become indefinite”.

“Ensuring that we actually get the future relationship in place to replace the backstop if used is a crucial element of this,” she told The Andrew Marr Show on BBC One.

She wants the EU to pledge that the final deal on the UK’s trade and security relationship is completed by December 2021 as part of a “triple lock” on the extent of the backstop. Other elements would be a guarantee to Northern Ireland businesses of “unfettered access” to British markets during the period, and a parliamentary oversight of the process.

Downing Street acknowledges there is little sign that Brussels is willing to give the deadline commitment but hopes it will offer more before next week’s vote. “They know the score, they know the timing,” one official said on Sunday UK time.

Mrs May sidestepped questions on whether she would keep putting the deal back to MPs if it was rejected, saying instead: “If the deal is not voted on … then actually we are going to be in uncharted territory.”

Lord Patten of Barnes, the former Conservative party chairman, will become the latest senior Tory to support a second referendum, albeit reluctantly.

“The whole sorry shambles began with a decision to call a referendum in order to try to manage the English nationalist right wing of the Conservative Party,” the former cabinet minister will say in a speech.

“It may be that we can only end this divisive and impoverishing argument by holding another referendum. That may prove to be the only and the best way for Britain to avoid an act of self-harm that would betray the aspirations of so many, not least the younger citizens of this country.”

The Times