The UK Prime Minister, Theresa may, and the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, have invited the bosses from Europe’s biggest corporations to Downing Street to discuss post Brexit trade relationships today (Thursday).
10 Downing Street (OGL)
According to Sky News those attending are in charge of companies that employ over 70,000 people in the UK and include the likes of the Bank of Ireland, BMW, Bosch and Kingfisher and B&Q, as well as Abellio, Bosch, Maersk and Wizz Air.
Sky says that the talks will cover implementation phase planning and the PM's vision of how the post Brexit relationship with the EU will look.
However, the two speeches given yesterday, one by the EU Commission president, Donald Tusk, rebuffing the PM's post Brexit vision and the other by the UK Chancellor putting the case for financial services to be included in any Brexit deal, show how far there is still to go before agreement is reached.
The UK politicians are, one assumes, looking to find a way of getting businesses that operate across the EU to place pressure on the EU to come to a good deal.
But on the other side, says Asa Bennett in the Telegraph, Brussels is hoping that UK Remainers will force Theresa May to ditch some of red-lines and so making the UK as much of an EU 'vassal state' as possible.
While the Sun Says that the EU negotiators are putting the pseudo-religion of their single market and customs union above the needs of their citizens and economies. Because of this, says the article, the UK needs to stop wasting its time and concentrate on a no-deal outcome to the talks.
But John Rental in the Independent says that there is hope. Pointing at Donald Tusk's speech yesterday he said that although the EU Commission President sounded like a disappointed parent explaining why the UK can't be given the impossible, the fact that he did not specifically mention either the Irish border question or financial services indicates that an agreement can possibly be reached.
A deal will almost certainly be reached in the end, but how it looks will in all probability depend on how much effort is put in to planning for 'no-deal' by the UK side.
