Queen authorises PM to begin Brexit

LONDON: Queen Elizabeth II gave royal assent on Thursday to a bill empowering British Prime Minister Theresa May to trigger Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty and begin the process of leaving European Union.

May has said she will send a letter to the European Council informing them of Britain’s decision to leave the bloc by the end of March, following a majority vote for Brexit in last year’s referendum.

The House of Commons speaker John Bercow announced the final goahead in the parliamentary chamber, prompting cheers from ruling Conservative Party MPs.

The queen’s signature on the bill allows May to invoke Article 50 any time from now in a process that will take a maximum of two years unless Britain and its EU partners agree to extend the deadline.

May said she will address the British parliament to inform lawmakers that she has triggered Article 50 and an initial response is expected from the European Commission within 48 hours. Full negotiations, however, are not expected to start for several weeks or months as both sides prepare.

“This will be a defining moment for our whole country as we begin to forge a new relationship with Europe and a new role for ourselves in the world,” May told MPs on Tuesday.

She had been widely expected to trigger Article 50 this week but the plan appears to have been derailed by a surprise announcement by Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon on Monday that she would seek a new independence referendum.

Meanwhile, an independent watchdog said on Thursday in an embarrassing blow for Prime Minister May that Britain’s ruling conservatives made “numerous failures” in reporting expenses for several elections and breached campaign spending rules.

The Electoral Commission slapped its largest ever fine — £70,000 (80,000 euros, $86,000) — on the conservatives after the party misreported expenses for the 2015 general election and three by-elections in 2014.

This was a further blow for May after a difficult week in which she was forced into a humiliating budget Uturn and wrong-footed by a surprise call for a referendum on Scottish independence.