So, UK Prime Minister Theresa May has triggered article 50 at last, and the countdown to Brexit has begun. Her letter to the EU in Brussels to announce the UK’s intention to leave the EU, delivered at lunchtime on Wednesday, means the UK will be divorced from Europe in exactly two years’ time. The huge question is what that divorce will look like and what it might mean, not only for the UK, but for its trade and investment partners, SA included. It’s not clear what the May government’s plan is or whether it even has a clear plan at this stage for what it wants to achieve out of the negotiations with the EU. There’s been plenty of blustering and rhetoric on all sides, but now the negotiations will have to begin in earnest on what, if anything, will replace the enormously complex and extensive set of agreements that have made the UK part of Europe for the past few decades. So many of Britain’s rules and regulations have been European ones, for so long, that its policy makers are proba...
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