(Bloomberg) -- The Scottish National Party is unlikely to back a post-Brexit customs union as part of a cross-Parliament effort to find an alternative to Theresa May's deal, two officials familiar with the matter said.
The views of the SNP are important because on Wednesday, when lawmakers rejected eight different potential plans for Brexit, the customs union option came the closest to a majority, losing by just six votes. The SNP's 35 Members of Parliament abstained at the time.
On Monday, MPs will try to whittle down the options by pushing the most popular proposals from this week's votes. There is talk of combining the customs union plan with another option for a new referendum in which the public would be asked to endorse the final deal.
But one SNP official said this idea would fall far short of the party's policy -- which is to keep membership of a customs union and the EU's single market. Another SNP official said a customs union doesn't allow for the free movement of EU citizens to Scotland, which is a key issue for the party.
To contact the reporters on this story: Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.net;Jessica Shankleman in London at jshankleman@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Stuart Biggs
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