Article 50 day

The news today is wall-to-wall Article 50 as the letter formally giving notice that Britain is triggering the process of withdrawal from the EU will be handed to Donald Tusk at about the time this post is scheduled to appear - 12.30pm BST on Wednesday 29th March 2017.

One lot of people are going mad about how wonderful this is, another lot are sunk in apocalyptic despair. Most of us just recognise that it is an important change and want the government to get on with negotiating the best deal they can.

I suspect the deal we end up with will be a lot less extreme than the more hardline Brexiteers are hoping of the more hardline Remoaners fear. The government fought to leave their negotiating position as open as possible during the debates on the Article 50 bill precisely so that they could have more room for flexibility within the negotiations.

Those negotiations will be difficult. I hope that Theresa May can get a good deal. But she will not get everything she asks for - as Philip Hammond rightly said this morning, there will have to be give and take on both sides.

I hope that neither side ends up walking away from the negotiations. But it is in the interests of each side that the other believes they might. If the other 27 EU countries believe there is no deal so bad that it would make Britain walk away, then we will probably get an awful deal.

At least now the "phoney war" is over and the real negotiations can start.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Britain will get what it deserves.
2:13 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
A comment which means precisely what the reader wants it to mean - which could be absolutely anything.
11:01 pm
Jim said…
Politicians are good at that arn't they. they do it all the time
7:20 pm
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