May threatens rebel MPs with general election over Brexit dispute
British Prime Minister Theresa May has threatened rebel Conservative lawmakers with a general election this summer if they continued to reject her Brexit proposals, according to a report.
The UK has been through a tumultuous period over the past four years with the Scottish independence referendum of 2014, the 2015 general election, the Brexit referendum of 2016 and the snap election called by May last year.
The Times newspaper reported that Conservative whips issued the general election warning to pro-EU lawmakers in parliament, led by the former ministers Stephen Hammond and Nicky Morgan, minutes before a crucial vote Tuesday on post-Brexit customs arrangements.
The prime minister narrowly survived the vote by a majority of six as she struggled to unify her divided party around her strategy for separation from the European Union.
Lawmakers voted 307 to 301 against an amendment to trade legislation that would have required the UK to negotiate a customs union arrangement with the EU absent of a free trade deal by January 21, 2019.
Former Prime Minister John Major said that May would face a general election if her Brexit plans failed.
“I think there are some people in the Conservative party now who are more dedicated to their concerns about getting the UK out of the European Union than they are dedicated to what the implications of that may be for their constituents or other people’s constituents,” Major, who led the country from 1990 to 1997, told ITV.
“Or the future of our country, or the interests of our country or the interests of our party, and I think there are more of them now than there were in the 1990s.”
Earlier, May had warned the rebel Tories that there could be "no Brexit at all" if they did not play ball.
May admitted that some MPs were worried about her plan for a “common rule book” with the EU for goods and customs traded within what she described as a new “UK-EU free trade area.”
The UK is due to leave the EU at the end of March 2019, but the two sides have yet to agree how their final trading relationship will work.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and the Brexit Secretary David Davis stepped down last week over May's plan for Brexit, which include remaining closely aligned to EU rules on manufactured goods.
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