Crunch Brexit talks hint at compromise
PRIME Minister Theresa May had a positive meeting about Brexit with her ministers, where they agreed upon the basis of her forthcoming speech on the UK’s future relationship with the European Union, her spokesman said yesterday.
“It was a very positive meeting and a step forward, agreeing the basis of the Prime Minister’s speech on our future relationship,” the spokesman said, following the Thursday meeting aimed at resolving differences over strategy in her government.
“Discussions will now take place at full Cabinet and you can expect the Prime Minister to deliver her speech next Friday,” he added.
Offering little insight into how or whether the rifts that have hobbled talks to unravel more than 40 years of union had been healed, Mrs May’s office said her team had spoken for eight hours on subjects ranging from the car sector to digital trade.
But one source close to the meeting at Chequers said Mrs May had accepted the argument of those ministers who wanted to move away from EU rules and regulations more quickly than others.
“Divergence has won,” the source said on condition of anonymity.
Mrs May’s meeting with her so-called Brexit war committee at her 16thcentury country residence was called to try to reach agreement on a preferred vision for Britain outside the EU, opening the way for Mrs May to make the final speech in what the government has called the “Road to Brexit” series of addresses.
Twenty months after Britons voted to leave the bloc in a referendum, Mrs May’s government has yet to put flesh on the bones of her vision for future ties, plans which were dealt a blow earlier on Thursday when EU sources ruled out her proposal for “managed divergence” from the bloc’s rules as “cherry picking”.
Britain’s prime minister is also feeling the heat from Brexit hardliners in her party who have called her acceptance of a statusquo transition after Britain leaves in March 2019 everything from a “betrayal” to “a perversion of democracy”.
Mrs May’s Cabinet of top ministers is not alone in being deeply divided over life after Brexit. The rifts are mirrored across Britain where the debate over plans to leave the EU after the June 23, 2016, vote has become increasingly angry and divisive.
The EU is also taking a tougher stance. On Thursday, sources in Brussels rejected a proposal made by Mrs May in a speech in Florence last year for “managed divergence” from EU rules.
Mrs May’s spokesman was unruffled. “We’re in a negotiation,” he said. “We’ve set out our position, the Commission will set out theirs. It’s a negotiation.”