British Prime Minister not ready to agree to leave EU, poll suggests British want to stay

LONDON / BELFAST (Reuters) – A poll revealed that Britain would vote to stay in the European Union, uncertainty over the possibility for Prime Minister Theresa May to reach an agreement on conditions Departure Tuesday.

At just five months from the UK, which is due to leave the EU on March 29, the number of voters remaining would be 54%, reaching 46%, the largest independent survey conducted since the Brexit vote .

May has repeatedly ruled out the resumption of the referendum, saying his job was to vote the 2016 vote to leave the bloc, even as his plan drew criticism from both sides of the Brexit division.

It must unite its government, its parties and its national allies around a Brexit plan also acceptable to the EU and which has yet to finalize an agreement. His spokesman said that it would take longer to address the Irish border issue.

Sterling fell after a senior member of the North Irish party, who backed May's government, said the UK was at risk of leaving the EU without an agreement.

"It looks like we are not aiming for any agreement," Jeffrey Donaldson, one of the 10 legislators of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), said on Twitter, whose support for May must push any deal through the British parliament.

But the book rallied strongly after a BBC reporter asked Brexit secretary Dominic Raab after a cabinet meeting that he had been up or down, and he had responded. : "Bravo."

Pound SEESAWS

The pound was up 0.3% against the dollar and Raab's comment pushed the euro to its lowest level in five months versus the pound.

One of the main outstanding issues in the negotiations is the resolution of the deadlock on an emergency solution for the Irish border.

Raab would have claimed the right to pull Britain out of its so-called "backstop" after three months, but Ireland said it would not consider proposals that would allow Great Britain to Brittany to separate it unilaterally.

Britain and the EU want to keep the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, members of the EU, open after Brexit, which is considered crucial for the Friday's Holy Peace Agreement signed in 1998, which ended decades of bloody carnage in Northern Ireland.

While final agreements on the border must be agreed in subsequent trade negotiations, a security agreement in case of failure of these negotiations turns out to be tricky. Britain's desire to break out of the customs union is not easy to reconcile with preserving the integrity of the EU's single market.

London also wants the support to be temporary rather than permanent, while the EU is opposed to any suggestion that it might expire.

May told his cabinet of senior ministers that there was still work to be done on Irish support and that even though the withdrawal agreement was 95% concluded, Northern Ireland was by far the main problem outstanding.

"Impossible to say"

While May was seeking support for its Brexit deal, in which Britain would seek free trade in goods with the EU while accepting some of its regulations, the Survision survey for Channel 4 suggested that he was unpopular.

Although 62% of respondents in the 20,000 survey are happy to follow EU rules on manufactured products, it was found that 33% of people would reject an agreement reached in May, compared to only 26% who would accept it. .

36% of respondents said that Britain should leave without an agreement, 35% said they should stay in the EU and 19% said the departure should be postponed until the end of the year. the conclusion of an agreement.

Many business leaders and investors fear that a "non-transaction" scenario could weaken the West, panic the financial markets and block the arteries of the trade.

UK Trade Minister Liam Fox said it was "impossible" to say whether a Brexit deal could be concluded with the EU this month or the next, but that Britain wanted an agreement and an agreement is better than not agreed.

The German car manufacturer Schaeffler (SHA_p.DE) announced the closure of two plants in Britain as part of the changes caused in part by Brexit.