Ed's Brexit round-up - Florence reaction!

Today, there was a speech by Theresa May outlining her approach to Brexit. It was billed as quite the grandstand speech, but it was not quite so much. She announced that she would be seeking a two-year extension after 2019 for Brexit to be negotiated, with the UK paying for this access. This is good in some respects for NPA members, who can continue business as usual on imports and exports and maintain migrant workers. However, the EU still has to agree to this as it does technically violate Article 50, which states the UK will have to have left by 2019!

We are now back in a parliamentary recess because of the party conference season. The NPA will be present at both the Labour and Conservative party conferences, sounding out MPs’ views over Brexit, the single market, animal health and welfare and future trade deals. If nothing else, it will be an interesting opportunity to see how the grass roots of both parties gauge the Brexit process, and their aspirations for food and farming.

In an interesting move, the top mandarin for the Department for Exiting the EU (DEXEU) has moved into No 10. The move has been seen by many to undermine the department, led by David Davis. DEXEU is there to sit at negotiating table with the EU, however such a move would appear to repatriate those powers to No 10. From the NPA’s perspective, we have had constructive meetings to date with the Department who have listened to our concerns, so it will be a case of seeing how this inter-departmental relationship develops.