It’s clear which issue will dominate 2017, says William Wearmouth on the BBC website. “Brexit, Brexit and more Brexit.” Theresa May has said she will be clearer about the government’s plans in the New Year. Her audience will be expecting “something beyond her gnomic utterances” that “Brexit means Brexit” or that she wants a “red, white and blue Brexit”.
She is likely to set out her government’s vision for Britain’s new relationship with the EU within the next couple of months, say Oliver Wright, Bruno Waterfield and Henry Zeffman in The Times. Her self-imposed deadline for triggering Article 50 is the end of March.
The Supreme Court judgement as to whether the government requires parliamentary approval to do so is looming, but even if the 11 justices uphold November’s High Court ruling, “the parliamentary arithmetic makes their verdict politically redundant”. The Labour leadership is “hardly flush with sophisticated strategists”, but most Labour MPs recognise that Labour’s hopes of a resurgence do not involve “frustrating the will of millions of their own voters”.
Brexit negotiations are unlikely to begin “in earnest” until October, says The Times. In May, Brussels’ attention will turn to France, where Marine Le Pen “poses an even graver threat to the European project than Brexit”. Then there’s Angela Merkel’s re-election fight in Germany, where she faces a “tough challenge” from the right-wing populist and eurosceptic party, Alternative for Germany. Under Article 50, Britain must leave the EU two years from the date it is triggered. If negotiations only really kick off after the German elections, the timetable will be seriously squeezed.
Britain lost one of its main experts on Europe earlier this week after Sir Ivan Rogers announced his resignation as Britain’s ambassador in Brussels, criticising the “muddled thinking” of May’s government in an email to staff. The departure of Rogers, a “true Europhile”, is no big loss, according to Leo McKinstry in The Daily Telegraph. A much bigger worry, says Iain Martin in The Times, is that six months into May’s premiership, we still don’t really know what she is “all about” or whether she is “up to the task ahead”.
The charitable explanation for her evasiveness is that she is taking time to adjust to her new role. However, an “enigmatic front… does not always mask great depth”. In the year ahead, May will have to deliver “more than calming balm”. She must declare her hand, and we will then discover whether the emperor is “wearing any clothes”.
Will Trump undermine the international order?
Last Friday, the US news was dominated by stories about President Barack Obama’s decision to expel 35 Russian diplomats because of Russia’s election-related hackings. When the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, announced that he wasn’t going to retaliate by doing something similar, President-elect Donald Trump took to Twitter to compliment Putin. “Great move,” he wrote. “I always knew he was very smart.”
Trump’s support for Putin is nothing new. When 17 US intelligence agencies issued a public statement concluding that Russia orchestrated the hack of the Democratic National Committee prior to the election, Trump argued that it was impossible to distinguish between a Russian government hacker and “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400lbs”. But his attitudes should alarm the UK, says Tom Tugendhat MP, in The Daily Telegraph. Although he has “rowed back” from earlier comments about Nato, which he described as “obsolete”, his behaviour does not bode well for the military alliance.
If Trump continues in this vein, warns Evelyn Farkas in Politico, we’re in trouble. “US interests and the international system that has protected and enriched America for decades are fundamentally at odds with what the Kremlin would expect from a full reset: the chance to rewrite the rules of international order in a way that would let Russia change borders through military force, violate the Geneva convention and murder political opponents with impunity… Ceding these rights to Russia in return for a few small gains will be damaging and dangerous.”