May to push for 'hard Brexit'
British Prime Minister Theresa May will target a clean divorce from the EU when she sets out her Brexit plans in a major speech this week, newspapers reported yesterday.
In tomorrow's address, she will call for Britain to unite and get behind Brexit, pleading for an end to the "insults" and rancour between Leavers and Remainers, her Downing Street office said.
But newspapers said she would be laying out the path towards a "hard Brexit" -- a strategy likely to infuriate embittered Remain voters even more.
May will spark two years of Brexit negotiations when she triggers the Article 50 departure process by the end of March. She has been under pressure to reveal her strategy for the talks that will set out the future relationship between Britain and the European Union.
Downing Street would not be drawn on matching reports in several newspapers that she was targeting a "hard Brexit" -- pulling of the single market, the European customs union and the European Court of Justice, in order to regain control of EU immigration.
The Sunday Times said May would announce that Britain is seeking a "clean and hard Brexit", citing the above points.
"May's triple Brexit blast" was how The Sun put it, saying May will "show she means business by announcing a triple whammy departure from the EU".
The Sunday Telegraph quoted a government source as saying: "She's gone for the full works. People will know when she said 'Brexit means Brexit', she really meant it."
Her comments came as finance minister Philip Hammond said Britain could change its economic model to regain competitiveness if it were to leave the EU without an agreement on market access.
Those comments, from an interview with German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, were interpreted as a warning that Britain could use its corporate tax as a form of leverage in Brexit negotiations.
Hammond said Britain had not taken a firm position on post-Brexit EU immigration, but the message from the June referendum vote to leave the bloc was: "we must control our immigration policy".
He said EU citizens would be free to travel to Britain and do business there -- but the debate was over the right to work, settle and set up business.
"Clearly we need people to come and work in our economy to keep it functioning," he said. But as for having no control, "that has to stop".
"He appears to be making a sort of threat to the European community," said Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labour Party. "It seems to me a recipe for some kind of trade war with Europe in the future."
Nevertheless, Corbyn said he would not block the triggering of 'Article 50' - the legal process of leaving the EU.
The problem for Britain is that the EU is likely to insist on freedom of movement for EU citizens in return for full access to the single market, while many of those who voted for Brexit did so precisely in order to be able to restrict immigration.
Comments