One year until Brexit, Britain has much to do
LONDON» Britain’s exit from the European Union has been likened to putting toothpaste back in the tube. But it’s more like trying to separate the fluoride from the paste: complicated and messy.
Thursday marks 365 days until Britain officially leaves the EU. The March 29, 2019, departure will end a 46-year marriage that has entwined the economies, legal systems and peoples of Britain and 27 other European countries.
British Prime Minister Theresa May was on a whistle-stop tour of the United Kingdom’s four corners to promise a Brexit that unites the country.
“Brexit provides us with opportunities,” May said at a weaving firm in southwest Scotland, before meeting parents in northeast England, Northern Ireland dairy farmers, business bosses in Wales and Polish immigrants in London. “It is in our interests to come together and really seize these opportunities for the future.”
May didn’t answer outright when asked if she thought Brexit would be worth it.
“It will be different,” May told the BBC. “I think it’s a bright future out there.”
For all her optimism, there are a thousand complex issues to settle — and little time.
Britain formally announced its intention to leave the EU a year ago, triggering a two-year countdown that University of Manchester political science professor Rob Ford calls a “ludicrously short” timeline.
“That’s not sufficient time to disentangle 40 years of political, social and economic entanglement,” he said.
Across the English Channel in Brussels, the chief European Parliament Brexit official, Guy Verhofstadt, listed a few of the many areas where the two sides must strike a deal: fishing, aviation, research and academic exchanges, nuclear cooperation and the handling of radioactive materials. Failure could leave British hospitals unable to offer radiation treatment and British planes stranded on the tarmac.
“In every one of these fields it will be necessary to find a new arrangement,” Verhofstadt said.
The EU has repeated that warning ever since Britain voted in June 2016 to leave: Brexit is going to hurt Britain. That applies especially to future trade and economic ties, which the two sides have barely begun to negotiate.
In a speech this month, May said she wanted “the broadest and deepest possible partnership” through a free-trade deal unlike any other in the world. EU leaders warn Britain that it cannot “cherry-pick” the benefits of EU membership without the obligations.
The two sides have given themselves until October to agree on the outlines of a deal, so that the EU and national parliaments can sign off on it before Brexit day.
Amid the uncertainty, British businesses worry. Since the referendum, inflation in Britain has shot up, and growth, once among the highest in the EU, is now below the bloc’s average.
And British voters are still divided. The 52 percent-48 percent referendum result divided Britain into two mutually mistrustful camps, Leavers and Remainers, battling over the nation’s future.