It’s over: Britain files for divorce from the EU There can be no turning back, says May
Commons, adding: “This is a historic moment from which there can be no turning back.” Tusk tweeted that “after nine months the UK has delivered,” followed by a photo of Barrow handing him the letter in front of British and EU flags in Brussels.
There is “no reason to pretend this is a happy day,” Tusk told reporters later, emphasizing that the priority now is to minimize costs for EU citizens and member states.
To Britain, he said: “We already miss you.”
But for Britons who voted 52 to 48 percent to leave the bloc in a referendum nine months ago, it was a time for celebration.
“I voted for Brexit and today is the day that vote starts to count,” said Charles Goodacre, a former taxi driver, in the northern England city of Sunderland. “Things have been bad round here for a while and we needed a change. There’s been a lot of arguments about what happened but we can now get on with it.”
Former UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, who campaigned for years to take Brexit from fringe cause to reality, said Britain had passed “the point of no return.”
“I can still, to be honest with you, scarcely believe today has come,” he said.
For “remain” campaigners, it is now time to fight for a divorce settlement that preserves what they see as key benefits of EU membership, including free trade in goods and services and the right to live and work anywhere in the bloc.
“The phony war is over,” said Joe Carberry, co-director of the pro-EU pressure group Open Britain. He said Britain had decided that it would leave the bloc — but “the issue of how we will leave, and the demo- cratic checks and balances along the process of the negotiations, remains unresolved.”
May’s six-page letter to Tusk was polite and conciliatory, stressing that Britons want to remain “committed partners and allies to our friends across the continent.”
She said the two sides should “engage with one another constructively and respectfully, in a spirit of sincere cooperation.”
But there was a hint of steel in May’s assertion that without a good deal, “our cooperation in the fight against crime and terrorism would be weakened.” That could be seen by some in Europe as a threat to withdraw British cooperation on crime and counterterrorism if the UK does not get its way. The loss of a major member is destabilizing for the EU, which is battling to contain a tide of nationalist and populist sentiment and faces unprecedented antipathy from the new resident of the White House.
It is even more tumultuous for Britain. For all the UK government’s confident talk of forging a close and friendly new relationship with its neighbors, it cannot be sure what its future relationship with the bloc will look like — whether businesses will freely be able to trade, students to study abroad or pensioners to retire with ease in other EU states. Those things have become part of life since the UK joined what was then called the European Economic Community in 1973.
It is not even certain that the UK will survive the exit intact. Scotland’s Parliament voted Tuesday to back First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s call for a referendum on independence within two years.