MAY TO SET OUT BREXIT PLANS

LONDON: British Prime Minister Theresa May on Sunday said that she will lay out more details of her Brexit plans in the “coming weeks” even as she asserted that it was not possible for the UK to hold on to “bits” of membership after leaving the European Union.

“Over the coming weeks, I’ll be setting out more details of my plan for Britain. Yes, that’s about getting the right deal for Brexit, but it is also about economic reform. It’s about getting the right deal internationally, but it’s also about a fair deal at home,” May said in her first major broadcast interview since taking charge at Downing Street.

In reference to border controls, she said, “Anybody who looks at this question of free movement and trade as a sort of zero-sum game is approaching it in the wrong way. I’m ambitious for what we can get for the UK in terms of our relationship with the European Union because I also think that’s going to be good for the European Union. Our thinking on this isn’t muddled at all”.

“Often people talk in terms as if somehow we are leaving the EU but we still want to kind of keep bits of membership of the EU. We are leaving. We are coming out. We are not going to be a member of the EU any longer. So the question is what is the right relationship for the UK to have with the European Union when we are outside. We will be able to have control of our borders, control of our laws,” May told Sky News.

Her comments came as she wrote an article in the Sunday Telegraph on wanting to move Britain towards a “shared society” with justice for all.

The slogan sets her on a different course from her Conservative party predecessors - David Cameron and Margaret Thatcher. May wrote that a “shared society” meant “a society that doesn’t just value our individual rights but focuses rather more on the responsibilities we have to one another with a commitment to fairness at its heart”.

“It goes to the heart of my belief that there is more to life than individualism and selfinterest,” she said.

Cameron’s “Big Society” agenda relied on voluntary organisations rather than state intervention. Instead, in a radical departure for a Tory politician, she plans to use a speech tomorrow to say that the central government has a responsibility to do more to strengthen “the bonds” holding communities together.