Johnson pushes for early Brexit trigger
BRITISH Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said the UK should not prolong the process of withdrawing from the EU, suggesting the government will formally trigger an exit by May 2017.
Though Britain voted for Brexit in June, formal talks with the 27 other EU members cannot begin until Prime Minister Theresa May activates Article 50 of the bloc’s Lisbon Treaty, which would set in motion two years of discussions about the terms of departure.
“What we want to do is not do it by Christmas, but obviously we can’t let the progress drag on,” Johnson told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday. “We’ve got to do a lot of work to gets our ducks in order and that is going on, but then after that, as the prime minister has rightly said, this process probably shouldn’t drag on.”
May has limited herself to saying she will not trigger Article 50 before the end of 2016. Her office slapped down Johnson last week by refusing to endorse his comments in a Sky News TV interview that Brexit talks would probably start in “the early part of next year”.
While Johnson refused to be more specific on the timing on Sunday, he hinted that it should happen before May to avoid Britain still being an EU member at the time of the next elections for the European Parliament in May or June 2019.
“People will be wondering whether we want to be sending a fresh batch of UK parliamentarians to an institution that we are after all going to be leaving. So let’s get on with it.”
Companies and investors have pushed the government for more clarity on Brexit and its timing so they can make business decisions that will depend on the nature of Britain’s eventual trading relationship with its closest neighbours.
The chiefs of several big US banks and corporations have warned May that they will begin shifting operations to continental Europe without clarity on that future relationship, the Sunday Telegraph reported, citing an account of a meeting in New York last week between May and companies including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and BlackRock.
May’s lack of transparency on the EU was also criticised on Sunday by Jeremy Corbyn, re-elected a day earlier as leader of the main opposition Labour Party. May’s office said in August there was no need for a parliamentary vote before triggering Article 50, and Brexit Secretary David Davis said earlier in September that “before Article 50 is triggered will be a rather frustrating time because we won’t be saying an awful lot”.
“I don’t think it’s democratic and I don’t think it’s sustainable at all,” Corbyn told the Andrew Marr Show. “This is a huge political issue. It’s the most significant economic issue facing Britain in my or your lifetime and I’d think at the very least, parliament should be fully informed and told.”
The Sunday Times reported that David Cameron had called her and her chancellor of the exchequer, Philip Hammond, “lilylivered” when, as home and foreign secretaries, they failed to support a tough line on immigration controls in Britain’s negotiations with the EU in 2014.