UPDATE | British Parliament rejects Brexit deal again

LONDON (AP) — U.K. lawmakers on Friday rejected the government’s divorce deal with the European Union for a third time, leaving the date and terms of the U.K.’s departure from the bloc uncertain.

The House of Commons voted 286-344 against the withdrawal agreement struck between Prime Minister Theresa May and the EU.

It follows defeats by even wider margins in January and March, and leaves the government’s blueprint for exiting the bloc in tatters.

Britain now has until April 12 to tell the EU what it plans to do next. It must either cancel Brexit, seek a longer delay or crash out of the bloc without a deal.

U.K. lawmakers plan to hold a series of votes Monday in an attempt to find a new plan.

Almost three years after Britain voted in June 2016 to leave the EU, British politicians remain deeply gridlocked over Brexit. May had urged divided legislators to support the deal and finally break an impasse that has left Britons uncertain when, or even if, the country will leave the EU.

She had asked the lawmakers “to put aside self and party ... accept the responsibility given to us by the British people.”

But the deal still was voted down, even after May sacrificed her job for her deal, promising to quit if lawmakers approved the Brexit deal and let Britain leave the EU in May.

Some previously resistant Brexit-backers had moved to support the deal. Former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson — a likely contender to replace May as Conservative Party leader — tweeted that rejecting it risked “being forced to accept an even worse version of Brexit or losing Brexit altogether.”

The Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland, with 10 seats in the House of Commons, has refused to back the agreement because it treats Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the U.K.

Parliament voted on the legally binding, 585-page withdrawal agreement that May agreed upon with the EU late last year. It sets out the terms of Britain’s departure — including its financial divorce settlement with the EU and the rights of EU and U.K. citizens after Brexit — but not a shorter declaration on future ties, which is also part of the agreed-upon divorce deal.