‘No turning back’
BRITISH PM HAILS HISTORIC MOMENT AFTER TRIGGERING BREXIT; MERKEL REJECTS MAY’S CALL FOR PARALLEL TALKS ON EU-UK TIES
LONDON P rime Minister Theresa May formally began Britain’s divorce from the European Union yesterday, declaring there was no turning back and ushering in a tortuous exit process that will test the bloc’s cohesion and pitch her country into the unknown.
In one of the most significant steps by a British leader since the Second World War, May notified EU Council President Donald Tusk in a hand-delivered letter that Britain would quit the club it joined in 1973.
“The United Kingdom is leaving the European Union,” May told parliament nine months after Britain shocked investors and world leaders by unexpectedly voting to quit the bloc. “This is an historic moment from which there can be no turning back.” The prime minister, an initial opponent of Brexit who won the top job in the political turmoil that followed the referendum vote, now has two years to negotiate the terms of the divorce before it comes into effect in late March 2019.
May, 60, has one of the toughest jobs of any recent British prime minister: holding Britain together in the face of renewed Scottish independence demands, while conducting talks with 27 other EU states on finance, trade, security and other issues.
In Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel snubbed May’s call for negotiations on the UK’s exit from the European Union to run alongside talks on defining their future relationship. “The negotiations must first clarify how we will disentangle our interlinked relationship... and only when this question is dealt with, can we, hopefully soon after, begin talking about our future relationship,” Merkel said.
We believe it is necessary to agree the terms of our future partnership alongside those of our withdrawal from the EU Theresa May | UK Prime Minister