Theresa May suffers worst government Commons defeat in history as MPs reject her Brexit deal

Theresa May’s government has been thrown into fresh chaos after the Commons overwhelmingly rejected her Brexit deal.

MPs voted 432 to 202 - a majority of 230 - against the withdrawal agreement she reached with Brussels after more than two years of negotiations.

As many as 118 Conservative MPs voted wih Labour, the SNP, Liberal Democrats, the DUP and other parties to reject the deal.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called it the "greatest defeat for the Government since the 1920s in this House".

Scotland's First minister Nicola Sturgeon has joined calls for a new referendum on Brexit in the wake of the result.

Both Labour and the SNP had surprised Parliament by dropping their planned amendments to the Government motion, thereby allowing MPs to train all of their fire on the Brexit deal.

May told MPs ahead of the vote: "This is the most significant vote that any of us will ever be part of in our political careers. After all the debate, all the disagreement, all the division, the time has now come for all of us in this House to make a decision."

Earlier, attorney general Geoffrey Cox had told MPs to stop acting like “children” and get behind the Prime Minister’s deal.

He said: “It provides for the orderly and predictable and legally certain winding down of our obligations and involvement in the legal systems of the EU.

“If we do not legislate for that legal certainty as a matter of law alone, thousands of contracts, thousands of transactions, thousands of administrative proceedings, of judicial proceedings in the European Union and this country, will be plunged into legal uncertainty."

But Corbyn said the withdrawal agreement was "a bad deal for our economy, a bad deal for our democracy, and a bad deal for Britain", which his party could not support as he repeated his calls for a general election.

The Labour leader as now tabled a vote of no confidence in the government tomorrow, which if passed could eventually trigger a general election.

However the DUP have indicated they will support the government tomorrow. Leader Arlene Foster said: "We will give the government the space to set out a plan to secure a better deal."

Nicola Sturgeon called the defeat "historic".

"What must happen now is clear," she said. "Firstly, and most urgently, the clock must be stopped on the Article 50 process. This is the only way to avoid any possibility of the UK crashing out of the EU on 29 March without a deal.

"Secondly, legislation must be brought forward to put this issue back to the electorate in another referendum.

"The government has had more than two and a half years to deliver a workable Brexit plan and it has completely failed to do so. The notion that it can do so now in a matter of weeks is farcical."