Prime Minister Theresa May offered her most explicit vision of Britain’s future relationship with its European Union neighbors, pledging to quit the single market and instead seek a customs agreement with the bloc to deliver “a smooth and orderly Brexit.”
The pound surged after May’s speech, in which she set out for the first time that her government is determined to make a clean break from the EU and said she would give Parliament a vote on the final Brexit deal. While saying that she wanted the U.K. to be “a good friend and neighbor in every way” to its former partners, she also warned them not to reject the model she was proposing.