British Prime Minister Theresa May was under mounting pressure on Monday to rethink her plan for leaving the European Union after Brexit talks reached a stand-off at the weekend over the so-called Irish backstop.
Less than six months before Britain leaves the bloc and days before May heads to Brussels for a summit on Wednesday when both sides hope to make progress, the Brexit talks were paused on Sunday after the two sides failed to agree on how to deal with the United Kingdom's only land border with the EU.
The problem of how to prevent the return of a hard border between the British province of Northern Ireland and EU-member Ireland has become the biggest hurdle to a deal on Brexit.
May, a self-declared unionist who has said repeatedly that she could not countenance the breakup of the United Kingdom, is struggling to find a way to satisfy the demands of not only the EU, but of her Conservative Party and her partners in parliament, Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
The DUP, which has threatened to pull support from the government over the backstop row, said it now believed a no-deal Brexit was almost inevitable and described the talks in Brussels as turning into a "battle for the union."
January 23, 2016: Sammy Wilson, Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MP, addresses the audience during the launch of the "Grassroots Out", a new cross-party group that will campaign for the UK to leave the European Union, in the Kettering Conference Centre in Kettering, north of London, UK. /VCG Photo
"Given the way in which the EU has behaved and the corner they've put Theresa May into, there's no deal which I can see at present which will command a majority in the House of Commons," said the party's Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson.
May's former foreign minister, Boris Johnson, the figurehead of Britain's Brexit campaign, was equally critical.
"In presuming to change the constitutional arrangements of the United Kingdom, the EU is treating us with naked contempt," he wrote in his weekly column in the Telegraph newspaper.
"It is time to scrap the backstop."
Boris Johnson, former UK foreign secretary, delivers a speech during the Conservative Party annual conference in Birmingham, UK, Oct. 2, 2018. /VCG Photo
The backstop is a device intended to ensure that there will be no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
It would mean that if there were no workable agreement on trade and security arrangements, Northern Ireland would stay in the customs union and much of the single market, guaranteeing a friction-free border with the Republic.
Meanwhile, Ireland's Foreign Minister insisted British Prime Minister Theresa May makes good on commitments to provide a "backstop" plan to ensure Brexit does not create a disruptive hard border with Northern Ireland.
Speaking as he arrived to meet fellow EU ministers in Luxembourg, Simon Coveney told reporters he was frustrated but calm after Brexit negotiations stalled on Sunday and said that he believed a deal was still possible after a summit this week.