There’s an awfully long way to go, but the Brexit negotiations got off to a good start for Theresa May this week I say in The Sun today. Number 10’s great worry was that there would be an immediate no from the EU to what it proposed. That is why May’s Article 50 letter was written in such a conciliatory and constructive tone—it was meant to be impossible to simply say no to.
This approach has had some success. In his negotiating guidelines, EU Council President Donald Tusk doesn’t suggest that the UK has to hand over the so-called divorce payment before trade talks can start—something which would have been unacceptable to the UK government. Rather, he says that the UK and the EU need to agree the principle by which the bill will be calculated before trade talks can start.
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