“We must continue to be very clear that Brexit means Brexit; that we’re going to make a success of it”, May told ministers on Wednesday, according to remarks e-mailed by her office.
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May said: “Over the last few weeks – quite a lot of work has been done”.
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said: “Saying Parliament will have an opportunity to discuss this is not good enough”.
“We have been very clear, Parliament will have its say”. However, they made clear that it would be the United Kingdom government’s decision to establish the terms of Britain’s EU exit and when it would begin, ruling out any possibility of a Scottish veto.The Brexit debate needs more tolerance on both sidesCharles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, said immigration controls meant Britain’s Brexit deal would not be along the lines of that used for Norway or Switzerland. “What is important is that we do this in the right timescale and we do it to get the right deal for the United Kingdom”, she has said.
She said the Cabinet had to consider “how we can get tough on irresponsible behaviour in big business”.
Two months on from the referendum, when the country voted to leave the European Union by a slim margin of 51.9% to 48.1%, the terms of exit and what a post-Brexit Britain would look like are still unclear, regarding the free movement of people and access to the single market.
That language suggests that May’s red line in the Brexit negotiations will be ending the right of European Union citizens to settle freely in Britain, even if that is at the cost of tariff-free access to the bloc’s single market.
Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May, second right, holds a cabinet meeting at her country retreat Chequers outside Wendover, England, Wednesday Aug. 31, 2016. “The closer the government looks at what is actually involved in leaving then the less likely they are going to be jumping ship”.
She formerly said she wouldn’t trigger it before the end of this year, and commentators have suggested she might delay it longer than early 2017 because the government’s new Brexit and International Trade departments aren’t ready to enter the formal negotiation process. For British government ministers remain locked in disputes with their own civil servants and with one another about what the so-called Brexit negotiations should seek to achieve, and who should conduct them.
Although this meeting was meant to consolidate the government’s position on Brexit negotiation, what London will seek from Brussels remains unclear. Another German government official stressed the strict ban in Berlin on any pre-negotiating: “We won’t talk about substance”.
They all head up departments which will have a key role in what happens next (with Boris in the Foreign Office; Fox, the global trade minister; and Davies as the “minister for Brexit”).
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“At the moment, they haven’t got a clue”, said Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform, a London-based research institute. But most of the diplomats in Britain’s Foreign Office – who have the necessary skills – are in no rush to volunteer for newly created Brexit positions which, by definition, will be temporary jobs.
