Mubasher: UK prime minister Theresa May would ask the European Union (EU) to postpone the Brexit process for a short while, a news report said on Wednesday.

The UK still needs to secure permission from the EU to postpone Brexit, through the approval from all 27 member states.

Without the EU permission, the UK would leave the bloc with no divorce deal next week.

Premier May is expected to deliver a letter to the European Council president Donald Tusk on Wednesday to request the extension to Article 50, which was initiated on 29 March 2017, giving London two years to negotiate its departure from the bloc.

The intended delay could possibly reach to 30 June in the hope of getting May’s Withdrawal Agreement through the parliament, Thomson Reuters reported, citing a UK government source.

“There is a case for giving parliament a bit more time to agree a way forward, but the people of this country have been waiting nearly three years now,” the source said.

The UK parliament voted down twice the Brexit deal reached between May and the EU leaders last November. British lawmakers eventually backed a proposal to push back the Brexit deadline.

However, the UK prime minister is looking to hold another vote on the deal possibly as early as next week.

May’s Brexit plans were thrown into further turmoil on Monday when the parliament speaker ruled that no divorce deal would be put to a new vote, unless it was re-submitted in a fundamentally different form.

There had been speculation that she could request a longer delay of nine months or a year, but such a step would stoke pro-Brexit fears that a delay could compromise the entire separation process.