Brexit talks with UK urgent – EU negotiator

THE EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier stressed the urgency of Brexit talks ahead of a meeting with Prime Minister Theresa May yesterday, with her government still deeply divided on the negotiations.

“My feeling is that we have not a minute to lose because we want to achieve a deal,” Barnier said as he left for London.

He will also meet the UK’s Brexit Minister David Davis ahead of talks between British and European Union officials in Brussels from today to Friday.

Reports in recent days that some government ministers will seek to keep Britain in a customs union with the EU so as to safeguard trade ties have raised tensions between pro-EU and pro-Brexit factions.

But ahead of Barnier’s visit, May’s spokesman said Britain did not want to be in a customs union with the EU once it leaves the bloc.

“It is not government’s policy to be a member of the customs union,” he told a daily briefing yesterday.

He said the two options were instead a new customs partnership or a highly streamlined customs arrangement.

London and Brussels struck a preliminary deal on key Brexit issues in December but are yet to discuss the conditions for a post-Brexit transition period and future trade relations. May has yet to bring together her divided government to produce a final plan.

High-profile pro-Brexit ministers Boris Johnson and Michael Gove are later this week set for a cabinet showdown with europhile ministers, led by Finance Minister Philip Hammond, as they battle to shape Britain’s post-Brexit vision.

Johnson and Gove are ready to deliver an ultimatum to prevent May backtracking on plans to fully leave the customs union, according to the Sunday Times.

Brexit supporters within May’s Conservative Party would be prepared to replace the premier with Johnson and install Gove as his deputy, with influential backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg as finance minister, the paper reported.

Such a move would enrage the sizeable rump of hardcore pro-EU Conservative MPs, raising the spectre of another general election, as May is running a minority government.

The internal tensions exploded into public view last week when Rees-Mogg accused Hammond’s department of “fiddling the books” in providing gloomy forecasts of Brexit’s economic impact.

Conservative MP and Brexit supporter Bernard Jenkin wrote in the Sunday Telegraph that May “can only command a majority in parliament on her present policy”. – AFP