Theresa May proposes two-year 'period of implementation' after UK leaves EU - as it happened

Here are more pictures of the protest by anti-Brexit expats in Florence ahead of Theresa May’s speech.

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I’m focusing on the May speech today, but a very big story has broken in London.

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, has put out this statement about the Transport for London decision.

I want London to be at the forefront of innovation and new technology and to be a natural home for exciting new companies that help Londoners by providing a better and more affordable service.

However, all companies in London must play by the rules and adhere to the high standards we expect - particularly when it comes to the safety of customers. Providing an innovative service must not be at the expense of customer safety and security.

I fully support TfL’s decision - it would be wrong if TfL continued to license Uber if there is any way that this could pose a threat to Londoners’ safety and security.

Any operator of private hire services in London needs to play by the rules.

Peter Foster, the Telegraph’s Europe editor, has a good but very long Twitter thread about Theresa May’s speech. It starts here.

Nigel Farage, the former Ukip leader, is very unhappy about the suggestion that Theresa May wants to keep freedom of movement during the transition. (See 10.08am.) It is “pathetic”, he says.

Farage has changed his tune on the government’s handling of Brexit a lot over the last few months. After May’s Lancaster House speech in January, he welcomed it as “real progress” and said: “I can hardly believe that the PM is now using the phrases and words that I’ve been mocked for using for years.”

The Independent today has published a BMG poll suggesting 52% of the public would vote to remain in the EU, and 48% to leave. That’s a two-point increase in the remain vote since BMG polled on this two months ago.

But it is not necessarily a reliable guide to what would happen if there were a second referendum. Shortly before the EU referendum last year a BMG poll also had remain on 52%. Of course, in the event leave won with 52%.

UPDATE: BMG tell me they have changed their methodology since the pre-referendum poll last year.

FURTHER UPDATE: BMG have sent me more details about how the methodology of the poll covered by the Independent differs from its pre-referendum one last year. Here is an extract from their email.

As promised, the three main ways that the poll today differs from the one you refer to are as follows:

1 - The poll you refer to [ie, the pre-referendum one] was conducted by phone; this is our monthly online tracker (our online polling correctly forecasted the outcome in 2016; albeit a little too leave ‘heavy’ 56/44.)

2 - The online poll now has a slightly different weighting scheme to correct for the overestimation of the leave vote (Past EU Vote i.e. how a respondent voted in EU Referendum in 2016.

3 - This methodology has many fewer adjustments than our telephone poll, just one called a ‘squeeze’ question to find out which way the undecided are leaning. These are added in at a factor of 0.5. This approach focuses more on getting a representative sample as possible than making complex adjustments.

Matthew O’Toole, a former Downing Street communications official who worked there before the referendum, making the case against Brexit, and after, until last month, making the case for it, has written a shrewd assessment of the government’s situation for Politico Europe. He says Theresa May’s problem is that she has not fully explained to the public the choices she is facing.

Here’s an excerpt.

So far, the government has largely declined to explain to the country the choices it must make in agreeing its withdrawal from — and future relationship with — the bloc. It has communicated much of its vision through repetition of tropes and slogans that obscured, rather than revealed, meaning.

Theresa May’s speech in Florence — an “update on negotiations” according to my former Downing Street colleagues — is an overdue opportunity to communicate clearly on the government’s strategy ...

Ministers have ... set out negotiating objectives on other issues, but only vaguely indicated how these will be traded off against one another. Papers have been published, but these have mostly avoided giving a clear hierarchy of needs.

The recent position paper on customs, for example, lists strategic priorities: frictionless trade with the EU; avoiding a hard border in Ireland; and having an independent trade policy.

These goals are not all achievable — or more precisely, they are not all completely achievable. The U.K. will have either to generously interpret their meaning (not unusual for a government) or decide which objectives are more important than others.

Some pro-EU protesters have already set up in Florence awaiting Theresa May’s arrival, the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg reports.

Chris Grayling’s interview on the Today programme about the prime minister’s speech did not get particularly good reviews on Twitter. Grayling was one of the leading figures in the Vote Leave campaign but even the pro-leave commentator Guido Fawkes wasn’t impressed.

Others, with remain sympathies were even more scathing. This is from the historian Simon Schama.

This is from Bloomberg’s Thomas Penny.

And this is from Peter Geoghegan, the Glasgow-based Irish journalist

Here are the main points from the interview.

• Grayling claimed that freedom of movement would end in the UK in 2019.

We have been very clear the freedom of movement ends in 2019 ... We have been very clear all the way through that freedom of movement comes to an end when we leave the European Union.

But he also refused to say what immigration arrangements would apply during the transition, saying: “That’s the detail that we will work through in the negotiations.”

The EU has made it clear that, if the UK wants a transition which involves full single market access (which it does), it will have to accept the the free movement of EU nationals into the UK can continue during the transition and Philip Hammond, the chancellor, told a Lords committee recently that the government’s plans for EU citizens to be allowed to come to the UK for a grace period after Brexit did comply with EU free movement rules.

Grayling’s comments suggest that, although Freedom of Movement may end in 2019 (in theory), freedom of movement (in practice) will continue during the transition.

• Grayling refused to say whether the UK would continue to accept European court of justice rulings during the transition. That was a matter for the negotiation, he said. (Again, if the UK wants a transition involving full single market access, it will have to accept ECJ jurisdiction, as Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, confirmed yesterday.)

• Grayling refused to rule out the UK paying more to the EU than the €20bn-odd that Theresa May is expected to put on the table today. Asked if this would be the final amount offered by Britain, he replied:

I can’t anticipate the nature of the nature of the negotiations that are going to happen. What I’ve said is that we are a nation that meets its obligations. There are of course things where we absolutely accept Britain has obligations.

• He refused to say whether the money was being paid to meet the UK’s obligations, or to obtain access to the single market. Asked specifically about this, he replied: “It is about cementing that future relationship.” The question arises because Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, used his Telegraph article last week to say the UK should not pay for access to the single market.

• Grayling claimed the UK and the EU were making “good progress” in the Brexit negotiations. He said:

We have made progress already. The headlines wouldn’t necessarily suggest it, but if you were involved in the technical details of the negotiation, they are making good progress on a lot of the issues that have been on the EU’s list at the start.

This is not what Barnier says. Yesterday Barnier said there was still “major uncertainty” in the key issues in the talks.

• Grayling said it was in the interests of both the UK and the EU to strike a deal.

• He said that the recent speech from Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European commission, showed why the UK had to leave the EU. The EU was following a different, more integrationist, path, he said.

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This is what the Press Association has filed about Santa Maria Novella, the church in Florence that is reportedly the venue for Theresa May’s speech.

Theresa May’s crunch speech on Brexit has been billed as Britain’s bid to break open deadlocked exit talks which have so far frustrated both sides.

So the grand, Gothic, Santa Maria Novella church in central Florence appears a fitting venue to attempt to heal divides which appear to have deepened since the beginning of tough negotiations in summer.

Today the square in front of the basilica is a picture of European unity, with tourists and Italians rubbing shoulders over gelato, Peronis and pasta.

And in the mid-15th Century it was the scene of the Council of Florence, gathered to bring about the reunion of the Greek and Latin churches.

It will be in that spirit that May seeks to make the first steps towards a “deep and special partnership” with the European Union despite the schism of Brexit.

Committed Brexiteers like Boris Johnson, who often see themselves as mavericks, may take something from another flashpoint in the church’s history.

It was the venue for one of the first attacks against Galileo, who along with other mathematicians was accused of heresy by Tommaso Caccini in December 1614 for claiming the earth moves around the sun.

The Renaissance man was of course proved right in the end and Leave supporters will hope the prophecies of doom from so-called “Remoaners” similarly fall away once the UK leaves the EU.

The church is also home to a number of notable artworks by Renaissance artists including Botticelli, Masaccio and Giotto.

The Italian city is the birthplace of that movement, widely seen as the cultural catalyst for the beginning of modern European history.

May will hope that Brexit is another chapter which proves as successful.

Politico Europe also has an interesting story about the choice of venue, saying that the May speech represents a departure from protocol because Italian officials have had very little involvement in setting it up.

Theresa May has given two big speeches on Brexit since she became prime minister. The first, to the Conservative party conference in October last year, signalled that she was heading for a “hard” Brexit and crashed the pound. The second, at Lancaster House in January, outlined 12 Brexit negotiating objectives. It confirmed that May was considering a transition period (or “implementation” period, as she called it), but also said that the UK wanted to leave the single market and the customs union while keeping “tariff-free trade” with the EU that would be “as frictionless as possible”. Critics claims that this still amounted to a Johnsonian desire to “have one’s cake and eat it”.

Since then the government has provided very little further clarity about what it wants, either in regard to the transition or to the UK’s ultimate post-Brexit relationship with the EU. Ultimately the UK probably faces a choice between cleaving quite close to the EU, in regulatory terms, or striking out alone. Or “high access, low control” versus “low access, high control”, in Brexit jargon. May has not opted decisively for one or the other.

Today we are getting the third big speech in this trilogy. According to what little briefing we have had in advance, May will use to make an explicit opening offer on the “Brexit bill” - the amount that the UK will be willing to pay the EU when it leaves. EU leaders have said the UK must pay for spending commitments in the current EU budget, which runs until 2020, and it seems May will agree, in a commitment worth around €20bn. This is important because it could be enough to break the deadlock in the Brexit negotiations, leading to the EU agreeing to move to the all-important phase two, the bit dealing with the future trade relationship, by the end of this year.

But there have been reports saying that the speech will still be relatively vague on what May wants long term. And, although further clarity on the transition is expected, it may not be enough to satisfy the EU side. On the Today programme this morning Chris Grayling, the pro-leave transport secretary, said that freedom of movement would end in 2019. Only yesterday Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, said that the UK would have to accept EU law, including free movement, if it wanted a transition period which allowed it to keep trading in the single market (which is what May does want).

I will post more from the Grayling interview soon.

Here is our overnight preview story about the speech.

And here is my colleague Jon Henley’s guide to what to look out for in it.

May will deliver her speech at around 2.15pm UK time.

Barnier is expected to respond very soon after May has finished.

I will be focusing more or less exclusively on the speech today, with reaction and analysis. But we might get a line out of Martin Selmayr, chief of staff to the European commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, who is speaking at an event in Brussels at lunchtime.

You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here.

Here is the Politico Europe round-up of this morning’s political news from Jack Blanchard’s Playbook. Here is the ConservativeHome round-up of today’s political stories. And here is the PoliticsHome list of today’s top 10 must reads.

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