Merkel: ‘Britain Has Illusions’ Over Brexit

May, who replaced David Cameron as prime minister shortly after last June’s referendum shock, repeatedly ruled out a snap election until April 18 when she announced the June 8 vote.

Theresa May has had “constructive” talks with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker on the Brexit process, Downing Street said.

Addressing her parliament ahead of this weekend’s EU summit at which European leaders will formally adopt Brexit negotiation guidelines, the German chancellor said: “Countries with a third country status – and that’s what Great Britain will be – can not and will not have the same or even more rights as a member of the European Union”.

But Nina Schick, associate director at advisory firm Hanbury Strategy, said there was in a sense in Britain of “at best optimism, at worst just not understanding where the European Union side is coming from”.

The Commissioner said the United Kingdom election could prove a positive development for Ireland.

Some 39% said they thought Brexit would leave Britain economically worse off; 28% said they thought Britain would be better off; while 18% said it would make no difference. “Any future framework should safeguard financial stability in the Union and respect its regulatory and supervisory regime and standards and their application”, the guidelines state.

“Ladies and gentleman, you may think that all this is self-evident”.

An Indian-origin campaigner, who had mounted a successful legal challenge to prevent Prime Minister Theresa May triggering UK’s exit from the European Union without Parliament’s approval, today launched a new tactical voting drive to avert a hard Brexit.

Earlier, addressing a conference in London, Mr Davis said of the Brexit negotiations: The UK has a very good reason to feel optimistic.

But he said that even as it leaves the EU, Britain has far bigger trade there than with anyone else. And we will approach negotiations in a completely different way to a Tory Brexit: “negotiating for the many, not the few”.

May has formally begun the two-year divorce talks with the European Union and laid out her hope that her government can settle the exit terms alongside talks on what the new relationship with the European Union will be. “We will have hard issues to confront, compromise will be necessary on both sides”, he said. “Compromises will be necessary on both sides”.

That figure is up two points on a month ago – compared with 43 per cent who thought the decision was right – down three points.

A Best for Britain crowdfunding page has already been backed by 10,000 people and raised over £300,000 (US$385,000, 350,000 euros), which will be used to commission research to identify the best candidates.