LONDON – Prime Minister Theresa May said yesterday she would seek another Brexit delay to agree an EU divorce deal with the opposition Labour leader, a last-ditch gambit to break an impasse over Britain’s departure that enraged many in her party. Nearly three years since the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in a shock referendum result, it is still unclear how, when or if it will ever indeed quit the European club it first joined in 1973.

In a hastily arranged statement from her Downing Street office after spending seven hours chairing cabinet meetings on how to plot a way out of the Brexit maze, May said she was seeking another short extension to Brexit beyond April 12. Her move offers the prospect of keeping the United Kingdom in a much closer economic relationship with the EU after Brexit – though it could also rip her Conservative Party apart as half her lawmakers want a decisive split from the bloc.

“I am offering to sit down with the leader of the opposition and to try to agree a plan – that we would both stick to – to ensure that we leave the European Union and that we do so with a deal,” she said.(Reuters)…[+]