Britain may move to change ‘economic model’ if shut out
Oxford Street in London. The pound fell last week to its lowest level against the dollar since October. “If it proves necessary, we have said we will consider time for implementation of new arrangements.”
Seven months after 52 per cent of voters chose to quit the EU against 48 per cent who wanted to remain, and less than three months before her own deadline to open two years of divorce talks, May is under mounting pressure at home and abroad to detail her strategy.
In a report released on Saturday, the panel of British lawmakers charged with scrutinising Brexit said her government must deliver its road map by the middle of February.
The speech isn’t the only upcoming Brexit milepost. The Supreme Court is set to rule this month whether May or Parliament carries the power to invoke the exit, although few see it being derailed either way.
The Sunday Telegraph reported that the opposition Labour Party will introduce an amendment in the House of Commons demanding that members get to vote on a final Brexit deal, and if defeated they will speak out in the House of Lords to urge the government to make the guarantee of a vote.
Britain could change its economic model to regain competitiveness if it were to leave the European Union without an agreement on market access, British finance minister Philip Hammond said in a German newspaper interview published yesterday.
In a thinly veiled threat that Britain could use its corporate tax as a form of leverage in Brexit negotiations, Hammond told Welt am Sonntag he hoped Britain would remain a Europeanstyle economy with corresponding tax and regulation systems.
“But if we are forced to be something different, then we will have to become something different,” Hammond said when asked directly about Britain’s plans to lower corporate tax.
“If we have no access to the European market, if we are closed off, if Britain were to leave the European Union without an agreement on market access, then we could suffer from economic damage at least in the short-term,” he said.
“In this case, we could be forced to change our economic model and we will have to change our model to regain competitiveness,” Hammond said. “We will change our model, and we will come back, and we will be competitively engaged.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said the EU must consider limiting Britain’s access to its market if London fails to accept the bloc’s “four freedoms” in Brexit negotiations.