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Brexit Was Always Going to be the Hard Way
As the ending, or at least what we think will be the ending, to the Brexit saga seems to be getting messier as it gets closer, the hard truth that not much has changed since the initial referendum vote nearly 3 years ago is setting in.
Writing in Politico EU, Tom McTague reminds us that through the ups and downs of the Brexit saga, nothing much has actually changed since the initial referendum, except the closeness of inevitability.
It was at 6:22 a.m. on June 24, 2016–59 minutes before the official tally was unveiled — that the European Council sent its first “lines to take” to the national governments that make up the EU.
The United Kingdom was leaving the European Union and Brussels was determined to seize control of the process.
In the short five-paragraph document written by Council President Donald Tusk’s chief of staff, Piotr Serafin, and circulated among EU ambassadors, the bloc’s remaining 27 national governments were urged to speak with one voice and to insist that the U.K. leave through the Article 50 process set down in EU law.
This meant settling the divorce first and the future relationship second, once the U.K. had left. “In the future we hope to have the U.K. as a close partner of the EU,” the document read. “First we need to agree the arrangements for…
