THE rejection of Theresa May’s Brexit deal yesterday could signal the end of her government.

Soon after the vote was announced, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn announced he had tabled a motion of no confidence in the government, which will be debated and voted on in Parliament today.

A defeat for the government could mean a new General Election. But, with the Democratic Unionist Party reportedly supporting the government, it looks likely Theresa May will survive the vote, barring an unlikely rebellion from her own MPs.

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Assuming she does survive, the prime minister has until Monday, January 21, to set out an alternative Brexit plan – with just 73 days to go until the UK is due to leave the European Union on March 29. This will likely involve her returning to Brussels for emergency talks with EU leaders.

In a statement immediately after the vote, Mrs May said: “The house has spoken and this government will listen.”

She has also offered to hold cross-party talks with MPs to determine a way forward, but attorney general Geoffrey Cox has suggested she will not tear up the plan.

Speaking before the vote, he said, if the deal was defeated, it would likely go back before Parliament “in much the same form with much the same content”.

Meanwhile, the rejected deal was also discussed in the Welsh Assembly yesterday afternoon, where Wales’ counsel general and Brexit minister Jeremy Miles said, assuming the agreement was defeated, a delay to Article 50 was the only answer.

Mr Miles was responding to Ogmore AM Huw Irranca-Davies, who said: “Most people in this chamber would want to avoid the situation of simply stepping out of the EU, whichever way you would call it, a hard Brexit, a ‘no deal’, crashing out of the EU – not a managed transition.

“But I’m struggling to see a way now in which we can avoid that in any of those scenarios without actually an extension of the Article 50 deadline.”

Mr Miles replied: “I think he’s right to say that. I think that finding a resolution to this is going to need an extension to Article 50.

“That’s certainly what we’ve been calling on the government in Westminster to seek from the other European Union members.”

Saying the deal “poses a real threat to the most vulnerable in our society and will place needless additional pressure on our public services”, he added: “We have been led to this cliff-edge by an inept government more interested in its increasingly desperate attempts to hold its own party together than the national interest.

“This situation is truly appalling.”