Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit negotiating stance is no clearer after a meeting with the leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said.
‘‘At the moment it doesn’t appear to me that there is a UK negotiating strategy,” Sturgeon told reporters outside May’s office in London after the talks yesterday. “I don’t know any more now about the UK government’s negotiating stance than I did before.”
All three semi-autonomous governments in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast have expressed concern about the damage Brexit will do to their economies, with May tending toward a deal with the European Union that will favour immigration restrictions over continued membership of the single market. Scotland and Northern Ireland, the only part of the UK to share a land border with the EU, voted overwhelmingly to remain part of the bloc, and the Scottish government says Brexit may justify another referendum on independence.
Yesterday’s joint ministerial committee meeting was the first between the prime minister and the leaders of the three administrations in more than two years and signalled an attempt by May to unify Britain’s exit plans ahead of negotiations with the EU that she’s indicated will start by April.
In a further olive branch yesterday, May offered Sturgeon, Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones and Northern Irish First Minister Arlene Foster a “direct line” to Brexit Secretary David Davis, setting up a sub-committee of the joint ministerial committee that will meet more regularly, starting next month.
“It was frank, it was at times robust, there was a fair amount of frustration in the room,” Sturgeon said of yesterday’s talks.
May’s office described the two-hour talks as “constructive” in a statement.
The prime minister told the meeting that there was “important work to do” in “getting the best possible deal for the whole of the UK.” She pledged to “further strengthen our own unique and enduring union” in the process.
“Wales voted to leave, but the people of Wales didn’t vote to be done over,” Jones told Sky News television after the meeting. “Access to the single market is the most important issue.”
Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, told reporters that “we believe we need to be at the heart of those negotiations.”
Sturgeon has floated the idea of a separate deal for Scotland that would keep it in the single market even if other parts of the UK leave. She said the option of a second independence referendum remains open if Scotland is taken out of the single market as well as the EU.
“I don’t want to see Scotland driven over a hard-Brexit cliff-edge, because that will mean lost jobs, lost investment, lower living standards,” Sturgeon said. “If that’s the position that we end up being in, then I think it is essential that Scotland at least has the option of choosing an alternative.”
Welsh First Minister Jones said he doesn’t see how Sturgeon’s proposal for Scotland to remain in the single market if the rest of Britain leaves “could work practically,” while May’s spokeswoman, Helen Bower, rejected the idea.
“The government is going to negotiate its departure from the EU as one United Kingdom,” Bower told reporters in London ahead of the four-way meeting. 

Stalled EU-Canada deal ‘has no bearing on UK’
Britain is disappointed by the stalled EU-Canada trade deal talks but does not believe it has any bearing on the chances of Britain securing its own Brexit deal with the bloc, Prime Minister Theresa May said yesterday. The EU’s hopes of signing a landmark free trade deal with Canada this week appeared to evaporate yesterday as the Belgian federal government failed to win the consent of some regional authorities. “I share everyone’s disappointment over the stalled talks between the EU and Canada, and we will of course do everything we can to try and help get these discussions back on track,” May told parliament. “But to those who suggest that these difficulties have a bearing on our own future negotiations, I would remind them that we are not seeking to replicate any existing model that any other country has in relation to its trade with the EU. We will be developing our own British model.” May also said parliament would be given several opportunities, both before and after Christmas, to debate Britain’s future relationship with the EU.