Post-Brexit Dreams of Global Britain Won’t Come Cheap

British Prime Minister Theresa May gives a speech on Brexit at Mansion House in London on March 2, 2018.

Brussels has said Northern Ireland should effectively remain in a customs union and single market after Brexit to avoid border checks.

She did this to prevent the necessary erection of a border between Northern Ireland the Republic of Ireland, but recently appeared to be backtracking on this promise again.

The issue is holding up agreement on Britain’s exit terms and a transition deal.

British Prime Minister rejected that out of hand and said there would be no breaking up of the UK’s common market or a border running down the Irish Sea.

Minister Coveney warned that the British Government has a significant responsibility to uphold the Good Friday Agreement and what is a “very complex and very fragile peace process”.

In what was billed as a “landmark” Brexit speech on Friday, Theresa May backed a mixture of “new technology” and close ties with the European Union as a solution to the border issue. “Surely that is not what she has in mind?” “Given the importance of financial stability, of ensuring the City of London, we can’t just take the same rules without any say in them”, May said.

Verhofstadt, a liberal former Belgian premier, tweeted that he would visit May on Tuesday but was unconvinced that, despite her insistence, Britain had stopped making unreasonable demands for continued market access while evading European Union rules.

“Friction is an inevitable side effect of Brexit”.

“If we were to accept passporting we’d just be a rule taker, we’d have to abide by the rules that were being set elsewhere”, May said in the interview with the BBC.

“From an investor viewpoint there was little of outcome, says Shore Financial Planning director Ben Yearsley, who also added the speech was pragmatic”.

But Irish premier Leo Varadkar called for “more detailed and realistic proposals”, although he was criticised by leading Tory Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg, who said the EU’s “absurd” proposition heightened the risk of no deal.

Mrs May dodged a question on Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson’s comparison between Ireland and the border line between Westminster and Camden in London.

“We absolutely need to get this right if farming is to keep delivering for Britain’s economy, environment and food security”, Batters added.

However, he was unclear whether this would mean outsourcing the UK’s trade policy to the EU.

“We can only hope that serious proposals have been put in the post”, said Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator and a former prime minister of Belgium.

Certainly technically the HMRC (HM Revenue and Customs) and the European Union themselves say that they have technical reports saying that in respect to the outcome of the negotiations in terms of free trade, it’s possible to implement the checks that are needed without having the physical infrastructure at the border, so I think to some extent the problem itself is really a smokescreen for something else.