Pro-Brexit British lawmakers were mounting a campaign Monday to rescue Prime Minister Theresa May's rejected European Union divorce deal in a parliamentary showdown this week.
Lawmakers threw out May's Brexit deal two weeks ago and will debate and vote Tuesday on competing plans for what to do next about Britain's impending departure from the bloc.
May insists her agreement can still win parliament's backing, if it is tweaked to alleviate concerns about a provision for the Irish border.
The measure, known as the backstop, would keep the U.K. in a customs union with the EU in order to remove the need for checks along the frontier between the U.K.'s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland after Britain leaves the EU.
That border is crucial to the divorce deal because it will be the only land frontier between the U.K. and the EU after Brexit. Border checkpoints have disappeared since Ireland and Britain both became members of the EU single market in the 1990s and the 1998 Good Friday peace accord largely ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland.
Opposition to the backstop by pro-Brexit lawmakers who fear it will trap Britain in regulatory lockstep with the EU helped sink May's deal earlier this month.
A new proposal submitted by Conservative legislator Graham Brady commits to backing May's deal if the backstop is replaced by "alternative arrangements."
"That won't be easy, and those who misrepresent the backstop don't have an alternative to it," he said. "The EU has been clear that the backstop is an integral part of the withdrawal agreement."
Conservative lawmaker Nick Boles, who is backing an amendment designed to rule out a no-deal Brexit and seek a delay to Britain's EU departure, said that Tuesday "is probably the only opportunity that Parliament is going to have to intervene in this process, to take control."
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