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Moments after Theresa May lost by 432 votes to 202, Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, announced he would seek to oust May's ruling Conservatives by bringing a motion of no-confidence in the government.RT reports Germany may open the door to new talks:
Corbyn said the result was "a catastrophic defeat" for May, with 118 of the prime minister's own Conservative lawmakers voting against her plan.
May was widely anticipated to lose Tuesday's vote, but her defeat was bigger than even the most extreme predictions. Before this week, the biggest government loss in Parliament was by a margin of 166 votes and came in 1926. May smashed that record, losing by a margin of 230.
The consequences are complex and uncharted. May's government will face Corbyn's no-confidence motion Wednesday, but it isn't clear whether the opposition leader has the numbers to make that work.
The wider picture is that more than 30 months after Britain voted in a referendum to leave the E.U. - by a vote of 17.4 million to 16.1 million - the politicians have still not agreed how this should work.
"Every day that passes without this issue being resolved means more uncertainty, more bitterness and more rancor," May warned lawmakers after her defeat Tuesday.
Some in Parliament want a "softer" Brexit or even another referendum - dubbed "the people's vote" - which might give the public the choice between May's deal, no deal, or no Brexit at all.
The German foreign minister has signaled the EU's readiness for new talks with the UK on Brexit if Theresa May's plan is rejected by Parliament. No significant changes to the deal, however, are expected.Pre-vote speculation:
"The agreement stands, as it is. I doubt very much that the agreement can be fundamentally reopened. If there were a better solution, it would already have been put forward," German FM Heiko Maas told reporters at the European Parliament on Tuesday.
Maas expressed hope that UK Prime Minister Theresa May will manage to push the Brexit deal through Parliament, which would be a good way to avoid a disorderly divorce. But if the plan fails to pass the legislators, the EU is ready for further talks.
The vote on the Brexit plan was originally due to take place in December, but Theresa May made a last-minute decision to postpone it for five weeks. Opponents of the PM accused her of doing so out of fear that the plan would fail in parliament. The delay has also triggered a no-confidence vote against May, which she survived.
Maas' remarks might be deemed reassuring - to a certain extent - for the embattled May's cabinet. Earlier on Tuesday, however, Berlin denied that Chancellor Angela Merkel offered any concessions to London. The alleged secret negotiations between May and Merkel were reported earlier by the Sun tabloid, which claimed the German leader floated certain proposals to sweeten the UK-EU divorce deal.
Britain faces a Game of Thrones-style apocalypse if Tuesday night's vote on Prime Minister Theresa May's crucial Brexit deal is unsuccessful, according to the grim forecasts by Environment Secretary Michael Gove.But all is not lost! With Merkel extending a life-preserver to May, it seems the Brexit circus will continue for even longer, likely ending in a fig-leaf "agreement" with the EU that fundamentally changes nothing.
Gove, a 'stark' supporter of the leave campaign in 2016, quoted the HBO series when discussing the potential consequences if May's EU Withdrawal Bill is defeated in the House of Commons.
"I think if we don't vote for the deal tonight we will do damage to our democracy by saying to people we are not going to implement a Brexit, and the opportunity that all of us have to live up to our democratic obligations is clear."
May is expected to be voted down by her own MPs in the House of Commons on Tuesday night. Early predictions estimate that more than 100 of her own backbenchers will vote against the deal, giving way to the biggest defeat in 95 years.
Gove himself refused to predict a victory for May, saying the real risk is that a defeat could mean Brexit won't be delivered.
"We know there are people in the House of Commons and outside who have never made their peace with this decision, who want to overturn it," the minister said.

President Donald Trump is mulling whether to recognize the president of Venezuela's opposition-controlled National Assembly as the de facto leader of Venezuela instead of President Nicolás Maduro, according to two people familiar with the discussions.See also:
The administration initially did not plan to take major steps after Maduro's inauguration last week, not wanting to give Maduro more attention, but ended up scrambling over the weekend to come up with a response following the outcry by international groups, Venezuelan emigrés in Miami and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, who has spoken repeatedly to Trump about the matter.
"Under the Venezuelan constitution, in absence of a president, the leader of the National Assembly assumes the presidency until there's a new election. Recognizing Juan Guaidó is the next logical step," said Rubio.
Fernando Cutz, who served as director for South America and acting senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council in the Trump administration, said "We're all recognizing this [the National Assembly] as the only legitimate democratic body in the country. And the constitution says that if the president is unavailable and the vice president unavailable, then essentially their speaker of the House becomes president."
The Trump administration is already taking steps to cut off some international ties with the Maduro government. Maduro was sworn in last week for a second six-year term, but the international community has largely questioned his legitimacy following what it sees as a fraudulent election. More than 21 former presidents and heads of government of Latin America and Spain said they recognized Guaidó as "the president in charge of Venezuela."
Guaidó was briefly arrested on Sunday, two days after declaring that he was prepared to take over temporarily as the country's leader.

Corbyn said May had repeatedly failed the British people and failed to deliver on her promise to secure a good Brexit deal.See: Brexit: A Political Farce Based on a Public Lie
"She cannot seriously believe that after two years of failure, she is capable of negotiating a good deal for the people of this country," he said, adding that the "most important issue" facing the country is that the government has lost the confidence "of this House and this country."
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The main sticking point for May on the Brexit deal has been the contentious Irish backstop - a guarantee Dublin sought and won from Brussels that there will be no 'hard' border imposed on the island of Ireland when the UK leaves the EU. May had attempted to gain concessions from Brussels to assuage the fears of pro-Brexit Tories and Northern Irish DUP MPs who were unhappy with the backstop deal, but did not secure any legal changes.
After May's deal was defeated on Tuesday evening, DUP MPs said they would still support her government in the no confidence vote on Wednesday, saying they never sought a change of government, but urged May once again to return to Brussels to get a better deal.
Scotland's first minister Nicola Sturgeon said that the Scottish National Party supported Corbyn's tabling of a no confidence motion, describing the vote as "a defeat of historic proportions" for May. Sturgeon accused the prime minister of wasting "valuable time" by delaying the vote in December when it was clear she did not have the support needed.
Comment: It's not just economic policies that are forcing Russia, China and much of the planet to move away from the US, it's their unrelenting pursuit of "World domination" and, seemingly, at any cost: Russian Deputy FM doubts full US withdrawal from Syria.
See also:
- America's nightmare: The Sino-Russian entente
- Pepe Escobar: Currency chaos, gold, oil, cryptocurrencies and dumping the dollar
- Press TV anchor Marzieh Hashemi jailed in US on unspecified charges
- Sanctions And Tariffs Have Turned American Exceptionalism Into Isolationism
- "Consider the danger": US ambassador threatens to sanction German Nord Stream 2 companies
Also check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Trump Ditches Europe, Europe Bluffs, Russia and China Carry on With Eurasian Integration