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You may recall that - prior to the vote - I said I was kind of on the fence about the whole Brexit thing.
It is apparent to me now though that in the short to medium term (which may be the next 10 years or more) the UK is going to suffer badly. The EU is holding the knife in the negotiations apparently, and the benefits (if any) of leaving won't become clear for a long time I believe.
I wonder whether many who voted to leave have regretted their decision.
Theresa May said she would ask Parliament to hold a general election so she can win a direct mandate to take the UK through the Brexit divorce with the EU.
The decision, which comes just three weeks after the prime minister began the formal Brexit process, stunned many British politicians as they returned from their Easter break.
Mrs May said she had “only recently and reluctantly” concluded that an election was desirable. “The decision facing the country will be all about leadership,” she said, from a lectern on Downing Street.
Mrs May had previously said categorically that the next general election would be held as scheduled in 2020, and many Conservative backbenchers had shown little enthusiasm for a vote. “It isn’t going to happen. There is not going to be a general election,” her spokesman said on March 20.
Mrs May blamed opposition parties and the House of Lords for stalling her agenda and weakening her negotiation position with the EU. “The country is coming together but Westminster is not,” she said. “Division in Westminster will risk our ability to make a success of Brexit.”
The prime minister is understood to have changed her mind after taking advice from senior figures including Sir Lynton Crosby, mastermind of the 2015 election campaign. Two polls over the Easter weekend put the Conservatives 21 points ahead of Labour, a lead that is likely to greatly increase its existing working Commons majority of 17.
Holding an election gives Mrs May an opportunity to win a direct mandate for the first time to be prime minister. She took power last July without a public vote, after David Cameron resigned and her remaining rival in the Conservative leadership contest, Andrea Leadsom, pulled out of the race. If Mrs May had remained in power without a vote until 2020, it would have been the longest a prime minister had served without an election since Winston Churchill during the second world war.
Theresa May’s claim that she will be strengthened in the Brexit talks by a general election victory has been dismissed as nonsense by the European parliament’s Brexit coordinator, who has condemned the prime minister as a political opportunist.
In an outspoken attack, Guy Verhofstadt suggests the prime minister was motivated by party political considerations rather than the national interest in calling a poll for 8 June.
Writing in the Observer, the former Belgian prime minister, who will play a key role in the coming Brexit negotiations, describes the election announced by May on Tuesday as “an attempted power grab by the Conservative party, who wish to take advantage of a Labour party seemingly in disarray to secure another five years of power, before the reality of Brexit bites”.
Verhofstadt further claims that putting more Tory MPs in the House of Commons will do nothing to bolster the British prime minister when it comes to the talks in Brussels. The latest polls have the Tories about 20 percentage points ahead of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party.
“The theory espoused by some, that Theresa May is calling a general election on Brexit in order to secure a better deal with the EU, is nonsensical,” he says.
“We can only conclude that many British politicians and the media still don’t fathom how article 50 will work in practice. Will the election of more Tory MPs give Theresa May a greater chance of securing a better Brexit deal? For those sitting around the table in Brussels, this is an irrelevance.”
Justifying her surprise decision to call a general election, May told the Commons last Wednesday that every vote for the Conservatives would “make me stronger when I negotiate for Britain with the European Union”.
She claimed that she needed protection from the Labour party, who had threatened to vote down a future deal; the Liberal Democrats, who wished to grind business to a halt; and the House of Lords, which has an anti-Brexit majority.
However, it has been suggested that rather than seeking to bolster herself against opponents of Brexit by gaining a larger majority, May is actually hoping to diminish the power of the hardline Brexiters in her own party, who would rather the UK crash out of the EU without a deal than see her come to a compromise.
The United States could strike a free-trade agreement with the European Union after President Donald Trump warmed to a deal with the bloc, the Times reported on Saturday, quoting sources from both sides of the discussion.
Post-Brexit Britain would be pushed behind Europe in the race to secure a U.S. deal after Germany's Angela Merkel persuaded Trump that talks on a deal would be simpler than he thought, the newspaper said.
Britain will not be free to agree new trade deals until it has left the EU in 2019.
Her real opponents, on Brexit-related issues, are the Lords, rather than the currently-nominal Commons "opposition".
Because of the convention that the Lords will never defeat a manifesto commitment, she needs to hold a general election mostly so that she can make all the Brexit-related issues manifesto commitments (which they're not at the moment), to get them through the Lords. In other words, she needs an election mostly so that she can publish an election manifesto. An unprecedented reason to call an election.
The polls suggest she'll gain 40-80 seats from it, as well, but that's actually less important (and was doubtless going to happen with the originally scheduled 2020 election anyway).
Meanwhile, various parliamentary journalists and columnists are increasingly reporting that many senior Labour figures had been pleading privately with cabinet ministers to hasten a general election, since it's now established that this is the only way they can ditch their own leader.
European Union leaders have unanimously agreed the negotiating guidelines for Brexit talks with the UK.
European Council President Donald Tusk, chairing the talks in Brussels, tweeted that the "firm and fair political mandate" for the talks was ready.
The 27 leaders - UK PM Theresa May was not present - approved within a minute the guidelines first issued on 31 March by Mr Tusk.
Talks with the UK will begin after the general election there on 8 June.
The deadline for completing the negotiations is 29 March 2019.
EU officials said leaders burst into applause as the negotiating stance was waved through.
The EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, said: "We are ready... we are together."
The guidelines set out that separation talks will agree the rights of EU citizens living in the UK, as well as Britons living in the EU, plus a settlement for the UK's financial obligations as an EU member state. A deal must also be agreed to avoid a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Only once "sufficient progress" has been made these issues can the subject of the UK's future relationship with the EU be discussed, according to the guidelines.
Speaking after the summit, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker again stressed that separation talks could not run in parallel with talks on a future trade deal with the UK.
However, the UK government has pushed for parallel negotiations.
Mr Tusk also called on Britain to provide "real guarantees for our people to live, work and study in the UK" and similar reassurance for UK citizens living in the EU-27.
"So many people's lives depend on it," he told reporters.
I think it's more a question of framework than rules. They are saying things like "you can't negotiate with EU states individually" which means that negotiations will have to take place at bloc-level.
May has still some negotiating leverage, for instance she has already threatened to reduce co-operation in security-related issues (a very unwise move IMO), and she threatened to turn the UK into a low-tax haven.
But clearly her 'hand' (as she likes to call it) is weak.
That's negotiating for you when you pit yourself against a much bigger entity.
Exactly so. I think the threat of slashing corporation tax to attract companies currently registered in mainland Europe is a better and probably more realistic card than the "security" one. "Not sharing security information" is probably a strong card, admittedly, given how much better ours is reported to be than that of any other EU country, but it certainly comes across very badly. She has a poor hand, as you say.