British Prime Minister Theresa May warns rebels: Back me or risk 'no Brexit at all'

British Prime Minister Theresa May warned her divided party on Sunday that there may be "no Brexit at all" if they wrecked her plan to forge a close relationship with the European Union after leaving the world's biggest trading bloc.

"My message to the country this weekend is simple: we need to keep our eyes on the prize," May wrote in the Mail on Sunday newspaper. "If we don't, we risk ending up with no Brexit at all."

Linking the fate of Brexit to her own survival in such an explicit way indicates just how precarious May's position remains after her government was thrust into crisis and USPresident Donald Trump publicly criticised her Brexit strategy.

With less than nine months to go before the United Kingdom is due to leave the EU on March 29, 2019, the country, the political elite and business leaders are still deeply divided over whether Brexit should take place and, if so, how.

May doesn't yet have a Brexit deal with the EU so the British government has stepped up planning for a so called "no deal" Brexit that could spook financial markets and dislocate trade flows across Europe and beyond.

She has repeatedly said Brexit will happen and has ruled out a rerun of the 2016 referendum, although French President Emmanuel Macron and billionaire investor George Soros have suggested that Britain could still change its mind.

In an attempt to forge a balance between those seeking a smooth Brexit and those who fear staying too close to the EU's orbit would undermine the very nature of Brexit, May sought the approval of senior ministers for her plans on July 6.

Earlier this week two senior ministers resigned in protest at May's plans for trade with the EU after Britain leaves the bloc next March. Her blueprint was then criticised in a newspaper interview by US President Donald Trump, a position he backtracked on during a meeting with May on Friday.

Trump said on Friday the United States and Britain could secure a "great" post-Brexit trade deal, lavishing praise on Prime Minister Theresa May and contradicting his own withering assessment of her strategy publicised hours earlier.

May also wrote in the Mail on Sunday article that Britain would take a tough stance in its next round of negotiations with the EU.

"Some people have asked whether our Brexit deal is just a starting point from which we will regress," she said. "Let me be clear. Our Brexit deal is not some long wish-list from which negotiators get to pick and choose. It is a complete plan with a set of outcomes that are non-negotiable."

Trump has seemingly breached royal protocol by discussing his private conversation with Queen Elizabeth II who he says thinks Brexit is a "very complex problem", according to an interview with British media.

The convention-shredding president, who had already attracted ire ahead of his four-day visit to Britain by rebuking Prime Minister Theresa May as she struggles over Brexit, met the Queen on Friday at Windsor Castle.