Calling an election AFTER triggering Article 50 - what madness is this?!

Ignores repeated calls to hold a general election before negotiations start.

Triggers Article 50, starting a frantic race against time to try to reach a deal within 2 years.

IMMEDIATELY afterwards throws the biggest spanner imaginable into the works by putting the British leadership, and hence negotiation priorities, completely in doubt. The negotiators may as well go home - 2 weeks done, time for 2 months off.

If, and it's obviously a very big if, she loses to a pro-EU coalition then we can walk away from​ A50. It's not a one-way ticket.

Of course, but if she wins (obv' she will) we've just wasted 1.5-2 months of extremely valuable negotiating time. There is a real risk we will leave the EU with no agreement at all, and that has just become substantially more likely.

I'm sure negotiations will continue in principle during this time, or at least, TM will want them to, but realistically you can't agree anything in a tense negotiation such as this when one sides motives are completely up in the air.

The logical thing to have done was to call an election a month ago, get it resolved, then trigger article 50 with a strong mandate. Like everyone was urging her to do.

It's called politics.

Its called ing over the country for personal gain, and people should be angry about it.

Hardly. Just like you think it's a big negative, many of her supporters will see this as ensuring stability during a tumultuous period.

The 7 weeks won't make one iota of difference in the grand scheme of things.

It'll be slightly longer with post-election faff.

Then that's what, 8% of the time we have to negotiate a deal with the EU? A deal which would normally take 5-10 years? Its also at odds with what TM was saying last month - that an election would introduce instability etc.

And its not like we triggered article 50 months ago - its been literally 19 days - any kind of sensible planning would have avoided this.

Ignores repeated calls to hold a general election before negotiations start.

Triggers Article 50, starting a frantic race against time to try to reach a deal within 2 years.

IMMEDIATELY afterwards throws the biggest spanner imaginable into the works by putting the British leadership, and hence negotiation priorities, completely in doubt. The negotiators may as well go home - 2 weeks done, time for 2 months off.

she doesn't care about the country, she just wants her own agenda to force scotland to remain and remove any opposition. If it was up to her she would have no accountability for any decisions

Scotland already voted to Remain, that's kind of the point...

If you understood how the negotiation time table will work you wouldn't have made this thread.

Zero will be done until after the French election and very little before the German election.

No it won't. Assuming no change in government, the result will be in by the early hours of the 9th, at which point everyone will go back to work.

Considering that the bulk of the work and negotiating is being done by the civil service, who don't stop for the election cycle in the first place, then there's not really going to be any noticeable stop to proceedings.

You realise that the 2 year"deadline" is bogus? They are allowed to extend it in the case that both parties want to do unless the UK or EU wants to walk out then they won't.

Ignores repeated calls to hold a general election before negotiations start.

Triggers Article 50, starting a frantic race against time to try to reach a deal within 2 years.

IMMEDIATELY afterwards throws the biggest spanner imaginable into the works by putting the British leadership, and hence negotiation priorities, completely in doubt. The negotiators may as well go home - 2 weeks done, time for 2 months off.