UK PM gets another headache amid Brussels upheaval

Europe’s Socialists just got stung again, losing control of the European Parliament. This setback creates a simmering risk for PM Theresa May as she prepares to withdraw the UK from the EU in 2019. Already struggling in France, Italy and the Netherlands, the Socialists last week ceded leadership of the assembly.to Centre-right candidate Antonio Tajani who won the job after a power-sharing deal with the Socialists collapsed in acrimony, ending a coalition between the EU assembly’s two biggest groups that had smoothed legislative business. With the 28-nation Parliament due to vote on any Brexit deal just before European legislative elections in mid-2019, EU insiders and observers question if the assembly’s Socialists will go into opposition mode for the next two years.

That would bury a traditional grand coalition of centrist European parties, leave them taking aim at each other in a bid to stem populist momentum and heighten the risk of an assembly veto of any accord on the UK’s exit from the bloc.