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A second referendum or a General Election appears “very likely”, one of Jeremy Corbyn’s closest allies said today as the Labour leader opened a second day of talks with Theresa May aimed at breaking the Brexit deadlock.

Shadow Attorney General Baroness Shami Chakrabarti suggested that another public vote would not be justified if Labour and the Government could agree a deal on quitting the European Union.

However, expectations are low that Mr Corbyn and Mrs May can unite behind a joint position and he is facing growing pressure to push for a so-called “People’s Vote”.

Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry is one of the Shadow Cabinet members now leading calls for a confirmatory public vote on any Brexit deal.

“Emily has got a point, because it’s five to midnight and because we have not broken a deadlock, a public vote or my preference, a General Election, these options become much more significant and possibly even necessary,” Baroness Chakrabarti told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“A public vote or a General Election remain the means of breaking deadlock in the country and one or other of those is very likely it seems to me in due course.”

She added that there might have to be vote in the Shadow Cabinet, if it cannot agree on a way forward on Brexit, with Ms Thornberry arguing for such a show of hands for any other option than a confirmatory vote.

Mr Corbyn is facing increasing calls to back a second referendum, with the giant UNISON union coming out in favour of one yesterday.

The Labour leader is said to be more open to supporting giving the public another say than some of his key advisers.

The febrile and tense atmosphere at Westminster this week has dampened hopes of a breakthrough on Brexit.

With Cabinet ministers branding Mr Corbyn “dangerous” in terms of national security and a threat to Britain’s economy, Baroness Chakrabarti hit out at Mrs May but also told how she now “does not want a no deal”.

The shadow Cabinet member and former director of human rights group Liberty added: ”She has been using the calamitous threat (of no deal) to our economy, and frankly to national security,...she has been playing with for some time.

“My understanding is that yesterday she made it quite clear that she does not want a no deal. I take that as a positive.

“Beyond that my understanding is there has been no agreement on anything else very much but I still think that is significant.”

Mr Corbyn said he raised the issue of a public vote with Mrs May in the first round of talks yesterday.

“I said this is the policy of our party, that we would want to pursue the option of a public vote to prevent crashing out or to prevent leaving with a bad deal,” he explained.

“There was no agreement reached on that, we just put it there as one of the issues that the Labour Party conference voted on last year.”

However, Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson is pushing for a firmer commitment to a second public vote, as understood to be supported by a majority of Labour members, with Parliament so far unable to break the Brexit impasse.

“What we think is that the people should take that argument away from us, stop us having that argument and let them make the call on the deal so that we can actually move on from these negotiations,” he told the ITV Peston show.

“That remains our position in the talks, and it is very difficult for us to move off of that because actually I don’t think our party would forgive is if we were to sign off on a Tory Brexit without that kind of concession.”

But the shadow Cabinet is split, with Labour chairman Ian Lavery reported to have warned that “this party could be finished by a People’s Vote”.