Theresa May wins last-minute concession before Brexit vote

U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May.
(Image credit: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

British Prime Minister Theresa May on Monday secured legally binding assurances that the European Union won't use the Brexit withdrawal agreement to keep the U.K. entangled in EU rules "indefinitely," The Washington Post reports. The agreement apparently guarantees that the so-called Irish backstop, intended to keep open the border between Britain's Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland, won't tie the U.K. to EU customs and trade regulations forever.

May rushed to Strasbourg, France, to strike the deal with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in a bid to avoid a devastating loss in a planned Tuesday vote on her Brexit plan less than three weeks before Britain is scheduled to leave the European trading bloc.

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Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.