Senior ministers are to discuss plans for Brexit with Mrs May at a Cabinet meeting at her country retreat Chequers on Wednesday.
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A Downing Street spokesman said: “Ministers agreed that we should be seizing the opportunity of Brexit to confirm the UK’s place as one of the great trading nations in the world, fostering entrepreneurialism and setting out a long-term vision for the country”.
“We really need a clearer sense of what Brexit “is” as we still have little idea about what it looks like”, he said.
In comments made at the start of the meeting while cameras were allowed in, May told ministers that the government was clear that “Brexit means Brexit”.
Mrs May will today hold the first meeting of her social reform cabinet committee, which will aim to help millions of people “for whom life is a struggle and who work all hours to keep their heads above water”.
Ms May must pull the United Kingdom out of the 28-nation bloc while minimising the damage to the economy, protecting key industries such as finance and negotiating new trade deals with both the European Union and countries further afield, including the US, India and China.
The UK’s future outside the European Union will be a key issue during the Prime Minister’s first full week back at work following her summer holiday in Switzerland as she travels to the G20 summit in China at the weekend.
She said the Cabinet had to consider “how we can get tough on irresponsible behaviour in big business”.
She has previously said that the government will not trigger Article 50, and the start of the UK’s exit, until the start of 2017 at the earliest.
The former chancellor said the government should no longer “waste time trying to negotiate elaborately” and invoke Article 50 immediately.
BERLIN, Aug 29 (Reuters) – Triggering the procedure for Britain to exit the European Union is like turning off the engines on an airplane, a top European diplomat says: best only do it if you can see a landing strip.
However, in ministerial offices, where turf wars have rapidly broken out, advocates of the withdrawal have discovered that four decades of European integration have left Britain so deeply embedded in the 28-nation bloc that there is no easy escape route.
It is expected that many Cabinet colleagues will disagree with each other on issues such as access to the single market after Brexit.
The Labour leadership-hopeful said Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union David Davis, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson had all previously suggested that voters should be given the opportunity to sign off on any deal struck between the United Kingdom and the EU. “Access to the single market, free of tariffs, free of custom duties”.
The three men do not like one another much and, perhaps mischievously, May has instructed them to share the use of Chevening, a 115-room country mansion in Kent, southeast of London, that is normally assigned to the foreign secretary but that is now nicknamed Brexit Towers.
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“There are many people out there who voted in good faith for Brexit and who felt they were doing the right thing for their families and communities, and I respect them for taking that decision”.
