A NO-DEAL Brexit is becoming more likely “day after day,” EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier said today after none of the four options for leaving the EU received majority support of MPs.

European Parliament Brexit coordinator Guy Verhofstadt echoed Mr Barnier by saying “a hard Brexit becomes nearly inevitable.”

Mr Verhofstadt said Britain “faced the abyss” if MPs cannot agree a way forward.

PM Theresa May was holding a three-and-a-half-hour long Cabinet meeting in the hope of finding a way to break the parliamentary deadlock with 10 days left till the new later Brexit date of April 12. Britain’s Communist Party called for a clean break that day on World Trade Organisation rules.

Last night, a motion for a customs union with the EU was rejected by just three votes, a motion for a second referendum by 12, and a Norway-style deal put forward by Nick Boles by 21.

Mr Barnier said Britain now has two options, to quit the EU without a deal or seek an extension to Article 50 if Parliament does not vote in favour of Ms May and the EU’s Withdrawal Agreement this week.

He added: “No deal was never our desired or intended scenario. But the EU is now prepared.”

Mr Barnier warned that a “strong justification” would be needed for an extension as it would “carry significant risks for the EU.”

The Political Declaration – which Ms May separated from the Withdrawal Agreement last Friday to force through a third vote on the day Britain was meant to leave – can accommodate a customs union or Norway-style relationship “today,” he added.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has said it was “disappointing” that no motion secured a majority.

The margin on Tory MP Ken Clarke’s motion for a customs union was “very narrow indeed” compared with three “overwhelming” defeats for Ms May’s Withdrawal Agreement, he added.

He called for the same options to be put forward again tomorrow in a bid to “succeed where the Prime Minister has failed.”

But Communist Party of Britain general secretary Rob Griffiths said: “These MPs show utter contempt for the EU referendum result — the biggest democratic vote in our history — and make a mockery of their past pledges to ‘honour’ the decision made by a clear majority of voters.

“Tragically, many of these would-be saboteurs are Labour MPs who put their loyalty to the EU above any loyalty to democracy, popular sovereignty and the Labour Party.
 
“Many are opposed to the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and have no concern that by painting Labour as an anti-Brexit party they are jeopardising the prospects of a left-led Labour government. Some openly support the possibility of an all-party ‘national government.’

“The priority now must be to allow Britain to exit the EU on April 12 on World Trade Organisation terms and secure an early general election and a Labour victory.”