For Britain, the independence clock is ticking

With a stroke of her pen, British Prime Minister Theresa May has pulled the trigger. By invoking Article 50, May has committed her country to being out of the European Union by March 2019. How challenging will these divorce negotiations be? To start with, the EU is demanding about $60 billion euros, roughly what Britain spends annually on defence. The bill would recover spending Britain previously committed to plus pension promises to EU bureaucrats. Britain, not surprisingly, says that amount is out of the question. But who’s in the driver’s seat?

If talks break down — some experts say it’s more like when than if — the EU can carry on with business as usual, more or less. Britain would be left without trade agreements, without agreements on movement of British goods and people inside the world’s largest free trade zone. How would the British economy function without millions of EU workers who would disappear in the absence of agreements over borders and movement? What about the million or so U.K. citizens living and working in another of the 27 EU member nations?

Britain wants free trade with no “friction,” but at the same time wants complete control over immigration, ending the right of EU citizens to live and work in Britain. The EU says Britain cannot have its cake and eat it, too. If it wants unrestricted market access, it has to accept “free movement,” a cornerstone principle of the economic union.

Granted, those are worst-case scenarios. Those hard-nosed attitudes are on full display from both sides, but optimists predict they will soften once negotiations begin in earnest. Let’s hope so. If they don’t, May has warned she could walk away, saying “no deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain.”

Even if talks go well, EU leaders say there is little chance of a final agreement by the deadline.

And then there’s Scotland. If Britain didn’t have enough on its plate, it now must also deal with a new political resolve that will see a Scottish independence campaign, driven in part by that country’s desire to remain in the EU — an ambition shared by Northern Ireland. That doesn’t seem to faze either side, with May saying there’s time for the agreement Britain wants, even as EU executive Jean-Claude Juncker warns: “There can be no cherry picking either. You are either in or out.”

All this makes for fascinating conjecture and speculation. Especially when observed from a distance, as opposed to living where the risks and challenges are all too real.