IDS is wrong: the UK should take its time over Brexit

The former Conservative Party leader is anxious that talk of delaying the trigger of Article 50 will be used by Remain supporters to delay the UK withdrawal from the European Union indefinitely. Triggering Article 50 begins a two-year countdown to departure from the EU.

Mr Duncan Smith’s concerns are understandable but even so, triggering Article 50 should indeed be delayed, perhaps far into next year.

The prime minister has rightly said that ‘Brexit means Brexit’. But ‘Brexit meaning Brexit’ does not need to mean ‘Hurried Brexit leading to Botched Brexit’.

Departure from the EU was, as this newspaper argued, the right decision for numerous reasons, including the unwieldy and incoherent entity that the EU had become.

But it is not inconsistent to argue that a break from the EU was appropriate while acknowledging that it was a huge and painful decision that comes with perils.

The EU and its predecessor formations have been at the heart of British foreign policy since the UK first applied to join more than half a century ago. The meshing of the UK and EU laws and governments has developed over more than four decades, and disentangling it all will take years.

It is taking months for David Davis and his team merely to appoint hundreds of trade experts, as will be so important in the complex trade negotiations ahead.

There needs to be a lot of discussion within the government as to the sort of relationship with Europe to aim for. And the outcomes of the French and German elections next year are highly relevant to what the EU will become. There is no reason to be anxious about taking time to get Brexit right.

Any extra negotiating space is time that Stormont, currently on a long holiday, needs to use well, given the thorny issues that need to be resolved by being on an island that will be partly in the EU and partly not.