May wins support from divided UK government on Brexit plan

Trump makes Brexit deal priority

LONDON, July 7, (Agencies): British Prime Minister Theresa May secured a cabinet agreement on Friday for her plans to leave the European Union, overcoming rifts among her ministers to win support for “a business-friendly” proposal aimed at spurring stalled Brexit talks.

After an hours-long meeting at her Chequers country residence, May seemed to have persuaded the most vocal Brexit campaigners in the cabinet to back her plan to press for “a free trade area for goods” with the EU and maintain close trade ties.

The agreed proposal — which also says Britain’s large services sector will not have the current levels of access to EU markets — will not come soon enough for Brussels, which has been pressing May to come up with a detailed vision for future ties.

But the hard-won compromise may yet fall flat with EU negotiators.

By also committing to ending free movement of people, the supremacy of the European court and “vast” payments to the bloc, May could be accused of “cherry-picking” the best bits of the EU by Brussels officials, who are determined to send a strong signal to other countries not to follow Britain out of the door.

The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier welcomed the agreement but added on Twitter: “We will assess proposals to see if they are workable and realistic.”

For now, May, who has been written off by critics regularly since losing her Conservative Party’s parliamentary majority in an ill-judged election last year, will be buoyed by the hard-won agreement.

“Today in detailed discussions the cabinet has agreed our collective position for the future of our negotiations with the EU,” May said in a statement. “Now we must all move at pace to negotiate our proposal with the EU to deliver the prosperous and secure future all our people deserve.”

In a document outlining the government’s position, ministers said they had agreed that an earlier proposal made to the EU “needed to evolve in order to provide a precise, responsible and credible basis for progressing negotiations”.

Instead, they had agreed to negotiate for a “free trade area for goods”, one that would see Britain having a “common rulebook for all goods” in a combined customs territory. This would allow Britain to set its own import tariffs and seal new free trade deals.

May

US President Donald Trump will meet British Prime Minister Theresa May and Queen Elizabeth II on a long-delayed trip to Britain next week during which he will also discuss the prospects for a UK-US free trade deal after Brexit.

“The president has been very clear ... he’d love to do a bilateral deal. He’ll get it done fast because I know it’s a major priority for him,” US ambassador Woody Johnson said in a phone briefing.

Johnson said Brexit was “a once-ina-lifetime opportunity to change direction” for Britain, adding: “Britain will make a success of Brexit because the UK is loaded with talent.”

Johnson said officials were already working on a deal, adding: “The president is ready and able to do that as soon as possible”.

Despite a series of diplomatic spats with Washington since Trump’s election, the British government is keen to strike a trade deal with the United States but the visit is likely to feature major protests against the US leader.

“Trump’s visit is an important moment to recognise our close relationship,” a spokeswoman for May told reporters.

Johnson said: “His mission is really to strengthen the special relationship.”

Trump’s trip will also take him to British wartime leader Winston Churchill’s birthplace and Scotland, his late mother’s homeland where he owns two luxury golf courses.

Trump will arrive from the NATO summit in Brussels on Thursday and will attend a black-tie dinner at Blenheim Palace, a country house near Oxford where Churchill was born in 1874.

The dinner, where Trump will be accompanied by First Lady Melania Trump, will be preceded by a military ceremony and guests will include British and US business leaders.

Police on Friday raced to find the object that contaminated a British couple with the Soviet-made Novichok nerve agent in southwestern England where a former Russian spy was poisoned with the same toxin four months ago.

Dawn Sturgess, 44, and Charlie Rowley, 45, fell ill on Saturday in Amesbury, a small town near the city of Salisbury where Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia collapsed on March 4, spreading fear once again among locals.

Police said they had established that the couple, who remain in a critical condition in hospital, were exposed to the nerve agent after “handling a contaminated item.”

They also did not rule out the possibility of more people coming into contact with the poison, which they suspect may have been left over from the attempted murder on the Skripals, although police have yet to determine whether it was the same batch.

“It is rather scary,” local resident Geoffrey, 66, told AFP, as he walked by the canal.

“It is an agent, it is not a gun or a knife that you can find and dispose of. It is something different, it could be on that bench ... it makes me worried.”

“It is terrible to think that it happened months ago, and now it starts all over again,” said 82-year-old Madeleine Webb.

“It is the second time already, why not a third time? It’s not funny.”

London blames Russia for the Skripal attack, with interior minister Sajid Javid on Thursday accusing Moscow of using Britain as a “dumping ground for poison”.

Russia has strongly denied the accusation.

“It is completely unacceptable for our people to be either deliberate or accidental targets, or for our streets, our parks, our towns to be dumping grounds for poison,” Javid told parliament.

But Russia quickly hit back, denouncing Britain for playing “dirty political games”, trying to “muddy the waters” and “frighten its own citi-