UK Prime Minister Theresa May appeared to have united her cabinet on the Brexit plan after the locked-up meeting at the Chequer last Friday. A key element of the plan is to establish a UK-EU free trade area with a common rule book for industrial goods and agricultural products. And the UK would commit by treaty to ongoing harmonization with EU rules on goods. However, on services, the UK will strike different arrangements for regulatory flexibility. And for financial services, the UK will seek arrangements that preserve the mutual benefits of integrated markets and protect financial stability. And, with the plan, the UK believed that the problem of Irish border would be avoided an a backstop plan won’t be needed. The full document is expected to be published this week.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove, on the the highest-profile Brexit campaigners, endorsed the plan. He told BBC that “One of the things about politics is that you mustn’t, you shouldn’t, make the perfect the enemy of the good. And one of the things about this compromise is that it unites the cabinet.” And he urged that “All those of us who believe that we want to execute a proper Brexit, and one that is the best deal for Britain, have an opportunity now to get behind the Prime Minister in order to negotiate that deal.”
However, the situation is complicated today as Brexit Minister David Davis resigned as he was not willing to be a “reluctant conscript” to the plan. He complained that “the general direction of policy will leave us in at best a weak negotiating position, and possibly an inescapable one.” And the so called “common rule book” with the EU will hand “control of large swathes of our economy to the EU and is certainly not returning control of our laws”. Separately, it’s reported that Steve Baker, a minister in the Brexit department has also resigned.
Sterling spiked higher earlier today and reversed on Davis’s resignation.
