General election fever and Theresa May's Brexit travails

Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform, believes the election may have a limited impact on the course of the negotiations. “I think it will strengthen her hand domestically. She says it’s to strengthen her hand with the EU. It doesn’t make any difference to the EU, because the EU has the whip hand. The EU is in a strong position, and Britain is in a weak position, and the fact that she has a strong majority behind her doesn’t really change the fundamentals of the power relationship between the EU and the UK,” he says.

“But she’s stronger vis-a-vis the lefty Tories and Labour and the SNP who might want to push her towards a very soft Brexit. And she’s stronger vis-a-vis the very right-wing Eurosceptic Tories who want to push her to as hard a Brexit as possible, to stop her compromising on the money and the ECJ and migration rules.”