Westminster chaos troubling for Brexit talks - EU leaders

GERMANY/BELGIUM: Leading figures across the European Union have warned that chaos in Westminster would make the Brexit negotiation timetable a nearimpossible task with talks due to start in 10 days.

British Prime Minister Theresa May’s political future was an open question after the exit polls, Bild, Germany’s biggest newspaper, reported while she was branded the ‘‘big loser’’ by a German Social Democratic Party MP.

Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister, blamed the ‘‘mess’’ in British politics on a lack of true leadership, and diplomats in Brussels lamented there could be no reliable negotiating partner across the table.

The view of EU capitals was that May needed a decent majority so she could face down hardline Conservative backbenchers who would refuse to compromise on the Brexit ‘‘divorce’’ money and the extensive rights Brussels wanted to see for EU citizens.

May invoked Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty at the end of March to begin the two-year Brexit process and the talks were slated to begin Monday week.

‘‘Who will we be meeting in two weeks? We do not know and we will not know for weeks if it is a hung parliament. Instability will be unhelpful for everyone but especially for Britain,’’ one EU diplomat in Brussels said.

‘‘We wanted a strong negotiator with Britain behind her; that is not looking good after this exit polls.’’

Bildt tweeted: ‘‘Could be messy for the United Kingdom in the years ahead. One mess risks following another. Price to be paid for lack of true leadership.’’

A Romanian MEP tweeted his pure disbelief at the state of British political leadership. ’’She has a majority, calls an election, loses the majority and has no coalition partner. And Article 50 is ticking,’’ Siegfried Muresan, a centre-right MEP, said.

In Berlin, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) was celebrating the rise in Labour seats but were concerned at the impact of a hung parliament on the Brexit process.

‘‘I am so happy for Labour colleagues that probably none have lost their seats but my first thought was ‘damn, a hung parliament’,’’ Jens Zimmermann, an MP in the SPD, said. He tweeted that May was ‘‘already a big loser’’ after the exit polls.

‘‘Party politics aside it is probably a very tough result from the German and European point of view because it brings uncertainty as we know how badly the British politicians feel about forming a coalition government. If Theresa May really does lose her majority then she probably has to resign because this is such a huge setback and she definitely made huge mistakes during the campaign.

‘‘I do not think we will see any reverse of the Brexit position. We know that many Labour MPS feel bound to abide by the referendum. I hope this could mean a fresh start to the Brexit process because we have gone through all the details in our Brexit task force and realised that it is really not doable in the two years. We need some sort of agreement to a transition period,’’ Zimmermann said.

In Belgium Jurek Kuczkiewicz, the EU affairs editor for Le Soir newspaper, said: ‘‘Has a once confident nation lost its common sense? How would have May reacted if someone told her ‘No majority is better than a bad majority’?‘‘ – Thetimes