Theresa May to ask EU to be creative about Brexit
UK - Theresa May will call on EU leaders to be more “imaginative and creative” about Brexit in her longawaited speech in Florence, after Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, warned that a substantive offer to settle the UK’s bills was needed to break the deadlock in talks. The prime minister will urge her European counterparts to share her vision for building a successful new relationship between the UK and EU after Brexit, despite talks with the European commission negotiators having reached a stalemate after three rounds. Addressing her remarks to other EU leaders, rather than the commission, May will tell them they all have a “profound sense of responsibility to make this change work smoothly and sensibly” by reaching a deal. “If we can do that, then when this chapter of our European history is written, it will be remembered not for the differences we faced, but for the vision we showed; not for the challenges we endured but for the creativity we used to overcome them; not for a relationship that ended but a new partnership that began,” she will say. “The eyes of the world are on us but if we can be imaginative and creative about the way we establish this new relationship, I believe we can be optimistic about the future we can build for the United Kingdom and for the European Union.”
The speech will strike a positive note just days after the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, challenged May’s authority by setting out his own upbeat blueprint for Brexit. In an article in the Daily Telegraph, he argued that the UK would still claw back £350m a week after leaving the EU, with much of it available to be spent on the NHS, and would have the freedom to deregulate. May is not likely to bow to all the demands of her foreign secretary, whose friends said this week that he could resign if she set out proposals to stay too close to the single market in a relationship with the EU akin to Switzerland’s.
(Thegaurdian.com)