Theresa May is offering up another Brexit referendum in her 'last chance' attempt to secure a deal

(Image credit: Kirsty Wigglesworth - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

published 21 May 2019

U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit push is getting desperate.

After three consecutive Parliamentary rejections of her deals to exit the EU, May on Tuesday told MPs that she'd let them vote to hold a second Brexit referendum and possibly make the whole plan disappear altogether. There's just one condition: MPs have to vote for May's most recent EU-approved deal first, Reuters reports.

May will execute her fourth and likely final Brexit deal vote in June. And to make that last effort count, May said Tuesday that she'd include a provision in the deal that allows the House of Commons to vote to hold a second referendum, which "must take place before the Withdrawal Agreement can be ratified," CNBC reports. That effectively means that MPs could opt to hold another nationwide vote on leaving the EU, but if voters reject Brexit in a second referendum, that deal and Brexit will be scrapped altogether.

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Since the U.K. voted to leave the EU two years ago, every deal May and other MPs have put on the table to do so have been flatly rejected. May has since narrowly survived two confidence votes in her leadership, and said in March that she'd resign if Parliament just agreed to the Brexit plan she'd proposed so many times. Yet even May's sacrificial lamb move wasn't enough for May's opposition Labour Party. Its leader Jeremy Corbyn started calling for a second Brexit referendum in February, and said last week that the talks "have gone as far as they can." That revelation left May accepting calls to officially draft her departure plan.

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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.

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