May wants Britons to bite the Brexit bullet
london — Prime Minister Theresa May told the British people on Friday that they have to face “hard facts” about Brexit, warning that the UK will have less access to European Union markets once it leaves the bloc.
But May also said she thinks a mutually beneficial future relationship is possible, and she urged EU leaders to work with her to deliver a “bold and comprehensive economic partnership.”
In a speech aimed at answering critics who have accused the UK government of failing to grasp the tough realities of leaving the EU, May said Britain wanted “the broadest and deepest possible agreement — covering more sectors and cooperating more fully than any free trade agreement anywhere in the world today.”
She said Britain’s goal post-Brexit is “a bold and comprehensive economic partnership with our neighbours in the EU, and reaching out beyond to foster trade agreements with nations across the globe.”
However, the other EU members might interpret Britain’s aim as attempting to cherry-pick benefits of EU membership, something the EU has repeatedly warned May’s government it cannot do.
The UK is due to leave the EU in March 2019, but the two sides have yet to negotiate new arrangements for trade, security, aviation and a host of other fields.
EU leaders have warned that May’s insistence on leaving the EU’s single market and customs union makes the continued close ties she is seeking impossible. —
london — Prime Minister Theresa May urged the European Union on Friday to show more flexibility in talks on a future relationship, saying Britain was ready to swallow the “hard facts” of Brexit but did not believe they prevented a successful trade deal.
In a much-anticipated speech, May mixed a gentler tone, jettisoning an earlier strident tone that Britain would walk away from the Brexit talks, with an appeal to the EU to work together to solve some of the more difficult Brexit conundrums.
She tried to tackle a row over EU member Ireland by again offering ways of avoiding a return to the hard border with the British province of Northern Ireland, acknowledging that London would have to maintain regulatory standards with the bloc.
That promise on regulation was one of several “hard facts” along with the suggestion that the European Court of Justice would still play a role after and that Britain might have to pay to get associate membership of EU institutions, that could alarm vocal Brexit campaigners in her party. But it was, she said, time to be “straight” with people over what was achievable, some 20 months after Britain voted to leave the EU and her government began to try to unravel more than 40 years of union. “We all need to face up to some hard facts,” May told ambassadors and business leaders in the Mansion House, the 18th century official home of the Lord Mayor of London in the heart of the capital’s financial district.
“Neither of us can have exactly
Neither of us can have exactly what we want. So we need to strike a new balance Theresa May, Britain’s prime minister
what we want,” May said. “So we need to strike a new balance. But we will not accept the rights of Canada and the obligations of Norway.” The speech, entitled “Our Future Partnership”, was an attempt to settle doubt over how Britain sees its future outside the EU and its economic architecture and to try to ease frustrations in Brussels over what they say is a lack of detail. She again dismissed the ‘offthe-shelf’ trading arrangements which the EU already has with countries such as Norway, saying that they did “not provide the best way forward for either the UK or the EU,” she said.
But her vision was little changed from an earlier proposal for Britain to be able to diverge from some of the EU’s rules and regulations while sticking to others which benefit Britain, a plan the bloc has described as “pure illusion”. — Reuters