Negotiations had “gone as far as they can,” the opposition leader said, suggesting the prime minister was too weak to guarantee any deal.
LONDON — Bipartisan talks on extricating Britain from the European Union collapsed on Friday, when the opposition Labour Party pulled out, ending the latest attempt to salvage the beleaguered Brexit process and leaving it in a familiar state of deadlock.
In a letter to Prime Minister Theresa May, the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, wrote that the negotiations “have now gone as far as they can.”
For weeks, discussions between ministers in the Conservative government and senior Labour figures had failed to break the Brexit impasse, which has wrecked the leadership of Prime Minister Theresa May and provoked a sharp backlash against both major parties from disenchanted voters, who vented their anger in recent local elections.
Mrs. May has been unable to unite her party behind the Brexit agreement she negotiated with the European Union, leading her to turn to Labour for support. But that has produced nothing except increasingly urgent calls from fellow Conservatives for her to step down.
On Thursday, she announced that she would set out a timetable for her departure next month, and Conservatives whose Brexit views are even further from Labour’s are vying to succeed her.
While the talks have been conducted in good faith, “we have been unable to bridge important policy gaps between us,” Mr. Corbyn wrote in his letter. “Even more crucially, the increasing weakness and instability of your government means there cannot be confidence in securing whatever might be agreed between us.
