May signals UK set for a ‘hard Brexit’
BRITAIN: Prime Minister Theresa May has revealed Britain will not attempt to cling on to parts of its EU membership in the strongest sign to date that she is heading for a ‘‘hard Brexit’’.
In a disclosure that buoyed Leave-supporting Tory MPs, she indicated that Britain is heading out of the bloc’s single market as she warned there would be no attempt to ‘‘keep bits of membership of the EU’’.
Her comments caused immediate concern among some Conservative MPs campaigning for a soft Brexit, which would see Britain remain a member of the single market in return for accepting the EU’s free movement immigration rules.
They come just days after a major Tory donor, the industrialist Sir Andrew Cook, warned he could no longer give to the party if it backed leaving the single market.
May also denied the government was suffering from ‘‘muddled thinking’’ over Brexit.
It is understood she will reveal more of her thinking on her Brexit negotiation strategy in the next two weeks.
In her first interview of the year, May suggested Britain would be aiming for a free trade deal with the EU, giving it access to the bloc’s single market and customs union, but not membership of them.
‘‘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,’’ the prime minister said.
Instead, May said she wanted to deliver a ‘‘really good, ambitious trade deal’’ that will allow British companies to ‘‘trade in and operate in the European single market’’.
She denied the assertion from Sir Ivan Rogers, Britain’s top EU diplomat who resigned last week, that there was ‘‘muddled thinking’’ in the government’s approach.
‘‘Our thinking on this isn’t muddled at all,’’ she insisted.
Leading Brexit campaigners praised the intervention.
Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, said May had been clear that Britain wanted control of its own borders and the power to negotiate its own trade deals.
‘‘Staying in either the single market or the customs union would be the worst of all worlds, subject to European law but unable to change it – now that really would be muddled thinking,’’ he wrote in a newspaper article.
‘‘There is a growing sense that those who go on about this socalled lack of clarity really don’t want us to leave the EU at all and that much of this is about fighting a rearguard action to defy the referendum result.’’
Michael Gove, the former justice secretary, said May had to press for ‘‘a full Brexit, not settle for fake Brexit’’ – including leaving the single market and customs union.