On 29 March 2019 the Queen should have a state dinner and invite the European Union’s 27 heads of state and its five presidents. The evening’s purpose would be to toast the new alliance between the United Kingdom and the EU: one based on free trade, security cooperation and shared democratic values.
This celebration of the new alliance will be especially welcome after two years of negotiations which are bound to be fraught and, at times, ugly. The complexity and the sums of money involved pretty much guarantee this. There is, though, a particular onus on Britain to keep things civil. We have chosen to end this failed relationship, so we should brave the insults and not feel the need to respond to every Juncker jibe. Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, puts it this way: he says that Britain is moving from inside the cathedral of the EU to become a ‘flying buttress’ supporting it. When he first made the point, in Bratislava, it was mistranslated to the French delegation as flying bucket’ — causing much confusion.
James Forsyth, Fraser Nelson and Hugo Dixon discuss the possibility of a ‘velvet divorce’:
So, this will be Mrs May’s mission: to make clear that, to her, the Article 50 talks are as much about starting a new relationship as ending an old one. After all, as Fredrik Erixon explains, both Britain and the EU will benefit from one an-other’s success. The EU is Britain’s largest export market and the EU exports more goods to Britain than to any country outside the EU.
Distressed Remain voters should console themselves with the fact that, whichever way you look at it, the old relationship never really worked. In 1973 we joined a club that was explicitly committed to ‘ever-closer union’.
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