Practical brexit
Dominic Grieve, Member of Parliament for Beaconsfield and former Attorney General for England and Wales, hosted GC at 1 Parliament Street for an exclusive conversation, covering the current state of Brexit negotiations, the potential impact on the legal profession, as well as an insight into the current state of Theresa May’s administration.
GC: Now less than a year out from the United Kingdom’s scheduled withdrawal from the European Union, how would you characterise the current state of negotiations between the UK and the EU?
Dominic Grieve: At the moment, they’re not going well at all. We are not talking the same language. The UK is seeking a bespoke deal recognising, in a sense, our past membership of the EU, our desire to maintain very close links with the EU in a wide range of fields, to have as near as frictionless as possible trade in goods and services if we can get it, and to participate in a vast range of EU peripheral activities. But at the same time, we want the freedom to operate our own immigration policy, not have freedom of movement, we want the ability to do third-country trade agreements and we want the ability – if we wish – to deregulate or change the regulatory framework in areas that we want.
