LONDON — Talks on a compromise Brexit plan between Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain and the opposition Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, hit a snag on Friday, with Labour leaders saying Mrs. May had so far refused to budge from her original plan, but the government saying it was still prepared to propose changes.
The development illustrates how challenging it will be for the leaders to reach an agreement for Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, or Brexit, with both Mrs. May and Mr. Corbyn facing political difficulties within their parties if they compromise.
Keir Starmer, Labour’s lead lawmaker on Brexit, said the government was so far not allowing “any changes to the actual wording of the political declaration,” the part of Mrs. May’s deal that outlines Britain’s future relationship with Europe and that would be the centerpiece of any compromise.
He said talks would continue only if the government changed its position.
“So far, the government isn’t proposing any changes to the deal,” Mr. Starmer told reporters on Friday. “We want the talks to continue and we’ve written in those terms to the government, but we do need change if we’re going to compromise.”
A minister in Mrs. May’s government, Rory Stewart, said the government was in fact prepared to compromise on the political declaration, saying the negotiations with Labour had run into problems but were not dead.
“In truth, the positions of the two parties are very, very close and where there’s good will it should be possible to get this done and get it done relatively quickly,” Mr. Stewart said in an interview on BBC Radio 4.
In a statement, Downing Street said, “We have made serious proposals in talks this week, and are prepared to pursue changes to the political declaration in order to deliver a deal that is acceptable to both sides.”
No further talks had been scheduled, a Labour official said, but the party was willing to reopen negotiations if the government’s position changed.
After seeing her Brexit deal rejected three times by Parliament, Mrs. May earlier this week sought to break months of deadlock by meeting with Mr. Corbyn.
Mrs. May’s plan was to eventually take Britain out of Europe’s main economic structures but give it control over immigration from continental Europe.
Mr. Corbyn has been reluctant to be pinned down on a single alternate plan, but Labour’s policy is to keep Britain more closely tied to European regulations and leave the door open to a second public vote on Brexit.
One of the compromise plans that has been most popular in Parliament is Britain’s agreeing to remain in the European customs union, meaning it would not charge tariffs on European products.
But Mrs. May would risk a rebellion of hard-line, pro-Brexit lawmakers in her Conservative Party if she accepts a compromise that keeps Britain tied closely to Europe.
Meanwhile, a compromise would force Mr. Corbyn to face the wrath of pro-European lawmakers in Labour, who want nothing less than another public vote that could reverse Brexit altogether.
Mrs. May already seemed to be contemplating difficulties in talks when she wrote on Friday morning to Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, asking to delay Britain’s departure from the bloc for a second time.
She said in the letter that if talks with Mr. Corbyn did not produce a compromise, she would hold a series of votes in Parliament on alternative paths, in the hopes that lawmakers would settle on one.
Parliament has already tested support among lawmakers for various plans, only for none to win a majority. But the government is expected to try to use a somewhat different voting process, were it to try again.
“This impasse cannot be allowed to continue,” Mrs. May wrote. “In the U.K. it is creating uncertainty and doing damage to faith in politics, while the European Union has a legitimate desire to move on to decisions about its own future.”
Mrs. May also conceded in the letter that Britain was preparing to take part in elections for the European Parliament in May.
She proposed a Brexit postponement until June 30, but analysts said Brussels would probably reject her proposed date — and some countries said they had yet to see a sufficient reason to support any extension.
Britain was originally scheduled to leave the bloc on March 29, but European leaders granted a short extension to give Parliament more time to approve a withdrawal deal.
Mr. Tusk was pushing European leaders to offer Mrs. May a one-year extension for Brexit while leaving the door open to an earlier withdrawal if Britain ratifies a deal, according to a senior European Union official familiar with his thinking. The official spoke on condition of anonymity, in keeping with standard practice.
That plan, described as a “flextension,” would eliminate the need for European leaders to repeatedly consider British requests for a delay. And in allowing Britain to leave sooner if an agreement is reached, Mr. Tusk appears to be trying to make it clear that Brussels is not trying to trap Britain in the bloc.
Mr. Tusk’s plan would still need the backing of European Union member states, and there were some signs of resistance from France, which typically takes the hardest line in these matters, as well as Austria and the Netherlands.
“The French president has made very clear that if we want to grant an extension: What for?” the French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, said before a meeting of European finance ministers in Bucharest, Romania, on Friday. He added, “It is up to the British government to give an answer to that key question.”
The cross-party talks had been cited by some as reason enough for the bloc to offer an extension. Further difficulties in the talks throw that into question, and any new extension may depend on what Parliament manages to accomplish next week.
The Netherlands has generally been more sympathetic to Britain, but Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, expressed exasperation with the British negotiating approach. “I keep being amazed at how the fifth economy of the world handles its interests,” he said.
In asking for an extension until June 30, Mrs. May was bowing to pressure from within her Conservative Party not to be seen as forcing the country into a longer delay.
But she was also laying the ground for a more protracted extension by agreeing that Britain was prepared to participate in European elections in May. That was seen in Brussels as a condition for another Brexit postponement.
Those moves have not gone over well with hard-line Brexit supporters. That rancor was reflected in a Twitter post on Wednesday by the lawmaker Jacob Rees-Mogg, who recommended that, if “stuck” in the European Parliament over the next year that Britain be “as difficult as possible.”
The Labour Party received a glimmer of good news in a by-election in South Wales, retaining a traditional Labour seat in an area that had backed Brexit in the 2016 referendum.
But amid low turnout, the margin was relatively slim, with the winner, Ruth Jones, receiving 39.5 percent of the vote, compared with 31 percent for the Conservatives and 9 percent for the rejuvenated far-right U.K. Independence Party.
Source : Nytimes
