EU set to force UK into long Brexit delay in danger for May

Bloomberg

Britain’s exit from the European Union looks set to be delayed by as long as a year in a blow for Theresa May that risks a destabilising backlash at home.
European Council President Donald Tusk rejected May’s request for a brief postponement to the UK’s membership, saying it would create a “rolling series of short extensions and emergency summits, creating new cliff-edge dates.”
Leaders were expected to finalise the length of the delay to Brexit at a summit on Wednesday. Tusk wants them to agree to an extension of up to a year, and diplomats from member states say the debate now is between December and next March for the new departure date.
Draft conclusions show EU leaders are planning to offer Britain an early exit option from the extension in case a solution to the domestic deadlock turns up.
After months of uncertainty and knife-edge votes in the British Parliament, the prospect of a lengthy extension is good news for business, which wanted to avoid a chaotic departure at all costs. The pound rose. But the long delay is another political defeat for May, who had promised repeatedly to take the UK out of the EU by March 29.
May’s ruling Conservative party has almost run out of patience with her leadership. Rival candidates to replace her are already engaged in barely concealed campaigning. With a long delay locked in, and the risk of an imminent no-deal departure averted, May’s Tory critics could decide they have no reason to hold back from trying to force her out. Pro-Brexit Tories will be furious at a long delay.
The EU is still discussing the conditions that it will attach to the extension with some countries more hardline than others. French President Emmanuel Macron is the most “reluctant,” according to Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell.
France wants the UK to have its decision-making powers
curtailed, with one French official saying an exiting member shouldn’t be able to weigh in on decisions such as the EU budget. France also wants regular checks to ensure Britain is sticking to its commitments of “sincere cooperation,” according to an EU official.
But the EU has no legal way of curtailing Britain’s voting rights so will rely on the incentive of a future trade deal to make sure the country behaves reasonably, according to a person familiar with discussions at a meeting of the bloc’s envoys.
Tusk, who tends to take a friendlier line towards the UK, reminded leaders that Britain remained a member with “full rights and obligations.”
Tusk also had a warning to those who might be tempted to gloat at the UK’s failure to leave, three years after voters decided to pull the country out of the trading bloc in a referendum.
“Neither side should be allowed to feel humiliated at any stage in this difficult process,” he said.
After May’s Brexit deal was rejected three times by a deeply divided Parliament, she invited the opposition Labour Party in for talks to find a new way forward. But while the government put a positive spin on the cross-party talks, Labour said May’s team had not moved enough.
“We have yet to see the clear shift in the government’s position that is needed to secure a compromise agreement,” the UK’s main opposition party said in a statement.