12.71°C Vancouver 12.71°C Vancouver
Jan 9, 2020 11:30 PM -
Paving the way for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union later this month, British Parliament has voted in favour of Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Brexit deal.
Thursday's vote followed a third reading in the Parliament in which 330 members of parliament voted in favour and 231 against.
With the passing of the deal, the biggest hurdle in the Brexit has been cleared.
It was the last opportunity for the MPs to reject the bill before it is sent to the House of Lords after which it will be put into legislation in the coming weeks. The UK's House of Commons has previously rejected the deal on three occasions.
The development has come following the re-election of Johnson in the election, which was called amid deadlock over Brexit. The ruling Conservative Party had struggled to finalise a Brexit agreement which has faced opposition and rejection by British lawmakers in the Parliament for the past several months.
Johnson had repeatedly said that the UK will leave the EU by October 31, the previous Brexit deadline, before he was forced to seek a three-months extension from Brussels after lawmakers voted against the new withdrawal agreement in the Parliament.
Brexit has dominated British politics for the last three years which included the resignation of former Prime Minister Theresa May.
Johnson's plan, agreed on last October after months of frosty stand-offs with European leaders, replaces May's Northern Irish backstop mechanism with a de facto customs border in the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
