British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry gave strong indications Monday that the U.K.’s decision to leave the European Union is real and won’t be reversed, despite the hopeful talk that emerged this week that somehow the vote might be reversed or delayed.
“The result last Friday is, of course, not the result that I wished for, and it means a difficult period ahead for our country as we adjust to the choice that has been made, and over a longer period, our economy adjusts to the new realities,” Hammond said after meeting with Kerry in London.
“But the people of Britain have spoken and the government is clear that the result must be respected and will be delivered,” he added.
Hammond played up the vote as one that doesn’t mean Britain has to withdraw from the world, and said his country would continue to cooperate with the U.S. and other allies. That includes work to defeat the Islamic State.
But Hammond also made it clear that Britain needs to start thinking about how the rules might change for people moving between his country and others in Europe.
“I see the central challenge ahead as being … how much freedom of movement against how much access to the single market,” he said. “And I think that is where the debate will coalesce in the end, but that we have, as a nation, to make some decisions about what the balance between the two is.”
He indicated the U.K. is already starting to think about how best to keep its market open to continental Europe even when it’s not a member of the EU.
“We’re standing here offering them a market which is hugely operating to their surplus,” he said. “And we’re saying we want to keep these arrangements, we want to keep this market open, we want to carry on trading with you as we have been doing before.”
Hammond also said he regrets the so-called “Brexit” vote, since Britain wants to help reform the EU from within. But he made it clear he now believes Britain will have to do that work from the outside, and talked about the UK’s membership in the past tense.
“I think if we’d been able to go forward together, working together inside the European Union to do that, Britain would have been enhanced, the European Union would have been enhanced, and 500 million people across the union would have had a better future,” Hammond said. “So I’m deeply sorry that that’s not the route that we’ve chosen.”
Kerry was asked directly by reporters whether the U.S. hopes the vote could be overturned somehow, but replied by saying he’s not aware of any path forward toward that result.
“I have no idea what options are available to those who will negotiate this agreement as they go forward,” he said. “And I will not even begin to venture an opinion at this stage of what the people of Great Britain ought to do or not do.”
Like Hammond, Kerry also seemed resigned to the fact that the vote happened, and the U.K. will withdraw in the coming months and years.
“[W]e have immense confidence in the quality of leadership on both sides of the channel in order to manage the transition in a thoughtful and sensitive and strategic manner,” he said.
“So yes, the U.K. and EU relationship will now change, but what will never change is that we are strongest when we stay united as a transatlantic community and find the common ground rooted in the interests and the values of freedom, open markets, equality and tolerance,” he added.
Kerry also sought to assure the U.K. that the various aspects of the “special relationship” between the two countries is too important to be interrupted, and that leaders from both sides will find ways to ensure there is no interruption.
“So all of those things are going to remain as important as they were before this vote took place,” he said. “It remains for us to see how this negotiation unfolds in order to fully understand exactly what type of trade platform we will operate off of or exactly how our — the full measure of our economic relationship is impacted.”
