Exit talks begin between UK and European Union
By
Chris Marsden
20 June 2017
Britain’s Brexit Secretary David Davis and Michel Bernier of the European Union (EU) launched negotiations yesterday on the terms of Britain’s exit from the trade bloc.
Davis did so representing a government in the midst of an ever deepening crisis, with a question mark hanging over the survival of Prime Minister Theresa May, a party split down the middle on whether a “hard Brexit” involving leaving the Single European Market should be abandoned, and a majority of all the major trade and business organisations insisting that it must be.
Davis, who represents the pro-Brexit wing of the Conservatives, was on a back foot from the start. Talks will begin according to the timetable set by the EU, with the cost of Britain’s “divorce settlement” and the status of Northern Ireland among the “separation issues” to be discussed before trade relations post-Brexit.
Earlier Davis had pledged “the fight of the summer” over this sequencing, but folded without a murmur yesterday. Everything the government does is now with one eye on surviving in office. May’s disastrous performance in the UK’s snap general election, the well of popular opposition expressed in Labour’s much better than expected performance under Jeremy Corbyn, and the hatred aroused by the Grenfell Tower fire has fuelled speculation of imminent leadership challenges. These are held in abeyance only by the threat of hastening a second general election that the party could lose.
It was in the midst of this febrile atmosphere that five major UK business bodies jointly demanded in a letter to Business Secretary Greg Clark that the government “put the economy first” and secure continued access to the European Single…