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Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May delivers a speech in the North Sea fishing port of Grimsby on March 8, 2019.CHRISTOPHER FURLONG/AFP/Getty Images

British Prime Minister Theresa May has launched a last-ditch push to save her Brexit deal with the European Union as the clock ticks down to a deadline on Tuesday that could see the Brexit process collapse and the country face what she called “a moment of crisis.”

Ms. May and EU leaders have been locked in talks for weeks about how to revise a withdrawal agreement they struck in November in a way that will satisfy British parliamentarians. The Prime Minister has to present a new version of the agreement to the House of Commons on Tuesday, and so far she’s been unable to secure changes from the EU that will win over critics, most of whom are within her Conservative party caucus. Negotiations will continue throughout the weekend, and Ms. May plans to make personal appeals to several EU leaders. The United Kingdom is supposed to leave the EU on March 29, and if MPs reject the revised deal on Tuesday, they will vote on whether to seek an extension of the deadline or leave without an agreement.

On Friday, Ms. May headed to Grimsby, a small city in northeast England where 70 per cent voted to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum. In a speech at a local factory she urged Tory rebels and the EU to get behind the deal. The EU “has to make a choice,” she said. “It is in the European interest for the U.K. to leave with a deal. We are working with them, but the decisions that the European Union makes over the next few days will have a big impact on the outcome of the vote [in the House of Commons].” She warned Tory MPs that if the deal is rejected on Tuesday, the Brexit process could drag on and the country might not ever leave the EU. “That would be a political failure,” she said. “It would let down the more than 17 million people who voted to leave the EU [in 2016] and do profound damage to their faith in our democracy.” Her deal “needs just one more push, to address the final specific concerns of our parliament ... Because if MPs reject the deal, nothing is certain. [The country] would be at a moment of crisis.”

Ms. May faces a seemingly intractable problem. The main stumbling block remains the fate of the Irish backstop. That’s a provision in the agreement that guarantees there will be no hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. Under the backstop, Northern Ireland would remain largely aligned to EU rules and the rest of the U.K. would fall into a customs arrangement with the bloc to allow for the free movement of goods. The backstop would remain in place until the United Kingdom and EU reach a comprehensive trade agreement.

Many Tory MPs fear those trade talks will drag on for years and that the backstop could keep the U.K. tied to the EU indefinitely. The Democratic Unionist Party, which is based in Northern Ireland and props up Ms. May’s minority government, is also opposed to the backstop. The Tory rebels and DUP want a time limit put on it or changes made that would allow the U.K. to unilaterally withdraw from it. Their opposition to the backstop was the main reason the deal was defeated by MPs in January, forcing Ms. May to return to Brussels to seek changes. This week Attorney-General Geoffrey Cox tried to hash out a solution with EU officials, but he had no success.

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European Union officials have refused to budge on the issue. They say the backstop is essential because it upholds the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland and eliminated all border controls, and they argue that inserting a time limit would defeat its purpose. Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar expressed some exasperation with Ms. May on Friday, telling reporters that the EU had made a lot of compromises. What’s required now, he added, was “a change of approach by the U.K. government to understand that Brexit is a problem of their creation, what was agreed is already a compromise. They failed to secure ratification of this, so it should be a question of what they are willing to offer us.” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte also poured cold water on Ms. May’s pitch. “To be clear: we are running out of options," he told reporters on Friday. "If the British keep asking for a time limit for the backstop, that’s not going to work.”

The Tory rebels are giving little ground as well, with some indicating that Ms. May will likely lose Tuesday’s vote. “If there are really no changes to this treaty, or if the changes are all sort of weak and legally meaningless, then you are basically asking the same question that you asked over a month ago,” Tory MP Mark Francois told the BBC on Friday. “Logic suggests if you ask the same question, then you get the same answer.”

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