MAY: WE NEED BREXTRA TIME
Desperate PM’s battle to solve talks stalemate
THERESA May will today call for extra time to complete the Brexit negotiations as she bids to revive the floundering talks.
The Prime Minister is expected to try to break the deadlock by agreeing to keep paying into the EU budget during a transition period.
But she risks angering Brexiteers by consenting to cough up as much as £20billion in return for continued access to the single market.
In a major speech in Florence she will admit it is a “difficult process”.
The PM will tell fellow EU leaders a successful agreement is in “all of our interests”. She will add: “If we can do that, then when this chapter of... history is written, it will be remem- bered not for the differences we faced, but for the vision we showed... “Not for a relationship that ended but a new partnership that began.”
Her multibillion-pound proposal would mean Britain paying into the EU budget for a set time – possibly as long as two years – after the official leave date of March 2019.
Hopes of speeding up the talks will hinge on Mrs May’s offer. A Tory minister said it will be “generous”.
EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said the divorce bill is among the issues that must be resolved before any transition can be agreed. He said: “If we want a deal, time is of the essence… without a withdrawal agreement, there is no transition.”
The divorce bill dispute between the two sides has hit talks for months.
Mr Barnier also said that, in a transition, Britain would have to abide by EU laws but have no say in Brussels.
And until the transition ended, the UK would not being able to stop freedom of movement or begin trade deals with non-EU nations.
Theresa May’s Brexit mini-break to Florence was ruined before she left Britain by Boris Johnson’s bloody betrayal.
The pretence that this PM is in control of our country’s destiny or the Cabinet is united are fantasies when such deep chasms were exposed in the mother of all Tory rows.
This is, as former party leader William Hague said this week, the biggest challenge facing us since the Second World War.
Yet May is weak and her government cleaved by ideological divisions.
It leaves us fearing the best Brexit deal for Britain is a vanishing hope unless an early election allows voters to pick a winning team to replace those currently in office.
But the other 27 EU states may have already dismissed Mrs May’s muddled offer, partly thanks to Johnson putting ambition before the national interest. We’ll listen to the PM but so far she doesn’t sound up to the job.