UK Brexit compromise talks break down

Talks between the United Kingdom’s Conservative and Labour parties have ended with no deal for the country to amicably leave the European Union after weeks of negotiations, party leaders announced Friday.

The Associated Press reported that Prime Minister Theresa May blamed Labour’s internal divisions over the issue as a key reason for the talks’ failure, pointing to members of the party who would prefer the party seek a second referendum on whether to leave the EU over a deal to successfully do so.

{mosads}“In particular, we have not been able to overcome the fact that there isn’t a common position in Labour about whether they want to deliver Brexit or hold a second referendum, which could reverse it,” she said.

But Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn pointed to May’s own coalition, which has been battered by the resignation of top advisers in recent months and reports indicating that May herself might step down within weeks, as the culprit behind the inability of the government and the opposition to reach an agreement.

The talks with May, Corbyn said, have “gone as far as they can.”

“We have been unable to bridge important policy gaps between us,” he wrote in a letter to May that the party later released, according to the AP.

In a statement Friday, May said that lawmakers in the U.K. now faced a choice: Deliver her plan for Brexit or deliver uncertainty and economic hardship for British citizens.

Lawmakers “will be faced with a stark choice: that is to vote to … deliver Brexit, or to shy away again from delivering Brexit with all the uncertainty that that would leave,” she said, according to the AP.

The British Parliament voted earlier this year to extend the country’s deadline for leaving the EU without a deal to October after it looked unlikely for a deal to be reached by the original March 5 deadline.