UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Friday will attempt to persuade MP’s to back his Brexit deal ahead of what he is expected to be a knife-edge vote in the House of Commons on Saturday.
Saturday’s showdown in the Commons is Johnson’s last chance to get Parliament to approve a deal before the Brexit deadline of October 31, the BBC reported.
The European Council agreed unanimously to endorse the deal, which includes plans for a regulatory and customs border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
“I am very confident that when my colleagues in parliament study this agreement that they will want to vote for it on Saturday and in succeeding days,” Johnson said in Brussels.
The PM Johnson said that he was “very confident”, MPs would want to vote for his agreement when they studied it.
On Friday, Johnson is expected to focus his attention on opposition Labour Party MPs in Leave-voting areas, a group of ruling Conservative Brexiteers, and rebels he expelled from his party.
On Thursday, Johnson took to Twitter, and said, “We’ve got a great new deal that takes back control”.
The two sides have been working on the legal text of a deal, but it will still need the approval of both the UK and European Parliaments.
The Northern Irish party had released a statement, and said that they could not support Johnson’s Brexit plan in its current form and after PM announcement they said that our statement “still stands”.
Earlier this week, the EU’s Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said that a divorce deal with the United Kingdom is still possible this week but the British government needs to come forward with a legal text.
The new deal is largely the same as the one agreed by former Prime Minister Theresa May last year – but it removes the controversial backstop clause, which critics say could have kept the UK tied indefinitely to EU customs rules.
Northern Ireland would remain in the UK’s customs union under the new agreement, but there would also be customs checks on some goods passing through en route to Ireland and the EU single market.
(With inputs from IANS)