A date with history

AT last! Now we can put the date in our diaries. In eight days, Theresa May will trigger Article 50. Come what may, on March 29, 2019 Britain will have left the EU.

The Mail confidently believes taking this historic step to free ourselves from the shackles of the sclerotic Brussels bureaucracy will open up a great future.

Yes, the talks may be hard, but with the economy – touch wood – still buoyant, we enter them from a position of strength. With her upbeat approach – and by declaring Britain wants to remain Europe’s ‘best friend and neighbour’ while making clear we will walk away from a bad deal – Mrs May is setting just the right tone.

Meanwhile, that deluded Eurocrat Jean-Claude Juncker threatens to make an ‘example’ of us and impose a £50billion divorce bill to dissuade others from leaving. But don’t such comments, and his insistence that remaining member states will ‘fall in love with each other again and renew their vows with the EU’, betray nothing but weakness and fear?

AFTER excelling itself with impartial coverage during the referendum campaign, the BBC has reverted to type. Its EU coverage is unremittingly gloomy and, as MPs argue today, dominated by ‘regretful Remainers’. Is it too much to hope that, once Article 50 is triggered, the BBC will stop painting such a relentlessly negative picture of Brexit Britain?