Brexit deal moves on to tougher next stage

BRUSSELS — Under severe constraints of time and internal politics, British Prime Minister Theresa May on Friday hammered out an initial agreement with the European Union to move British talks on exiting the bloc to the next, more-serious phase.

The pact resolved a trio of issues that had taken the better part of nine months to negotiate. It avoided a “hard” border in Ireland; set the mechanism to calculate Britain’s “divorce bill,” estimated at $47 billion to $52 billion, roughly double May’s original offer; and established judicial protocols to protect the rights of the 3 million European citizens in Britain and the million British citizens in the European Union.

May clinched the deal with a unilateral promise — details to be negotiated later — that Britain would not reimpose physical border controls between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, a member of the EU, even if Britain ultimately fails to strike a trade deal with the bloc.

The pact put a patina of success on an effort by the government that was characterized by internal quarreling and an occasionally humiliating and ultimately hopeless effort to bend the EU to its will. It was punctuated by a disastrous election that left May weakened.

Difficult as that was, most analysts agree that the second stage of negotiations will be far harder. In that phase, Britain and the EU will begin to tangle with the finer details of the divorce settlement and the structure, at least, of the future relationship that Britain, as a nonmember, will have with the European Union.

For that to happen, though, the badly divided Cabinet members will have to begin to work out agreements among themselves about the future relationship. At the same time, they will need to grapple at the negotiating table with a dominant EU that is determined to make an example of Britain to any other member states thinking of cutting ties.