Brexit: Departure date pushed back by at least two weeks

Theresa May has been granted an extra two weeks to come up with a Brexit solution after talks with EU leaders.

The UK's departure date had originally been set for 29 March.

If Mrs May can get her withdrawal deal through Parliament next week, that date will be pushed back to 22 May to give time to pass the necessary legislation.

If the prime minister can't get the deal through, the UK will have to propose a way forward by 12 April for EU leaders to consider.

European Council President Donald Tusk said all Brexit options would remain open until then.

"The UK government will still have a choice between a deal, no deal, a long extension or revoking Article 50," he said.

"The 12 April is a key date in terms of the UK deciding whether to hold European Parliament elections.

"If it has not decided to do so by then, the option of long extension will automatically become impossible."

Mrs May ruled out revoking Article 50, which would cancel Brexit, and she also said "it would be wrong" to ask Britons to vote for candidates for the elections to the European Parliament, due to be held from 23-26 May, three years after they voted to leave the EU.

The UK's departure date is still written in to law as next Friday, 29 March.

Mrs May is expected to table secondary legislation - that has to go through the Commons and the Lords by next Friday - to remove 29 March from UK law.

But Downing Street sources say an agreement with the EU to extend the Brexit deadline would be a piece of international law and would take precedence even if Parliament rejected it.

Mrs May said MPs had a "clear choice".

Speaking on Thursday, after waiting for the 27 other EU countries to make their decision at a summit in Brussels, the prime minister said she would now be "working hard to build support for getting the deal through".

MPs are expected to vote for a third time on the Brexit withdrawal deal next week, despite Commons Speaker John Bercow saying what is put forward must be substantially different to be voted onWith only eight days to go until the scheduled Brexit day, what worried EU leaders most was Mrs May's inability - or refusal - to answer their insistent question: what will you do if the Brexit deal fails to get through Parliament next week?

It was then that EU leaders decided they had to take control of the situation if they hoped to head off a no-deal Brexit.

By the time the 27 leaders emerged at their Brussels summit, bleary-eyed from hours of bad-tempered debate about delaying Brexit, it became clear that they had "done a May".

By that, I mean they had managed to kick the Brexit crunch-time can another couple of weeks down the road - something Theresa May has become famous for throughout the Brexit process.