Given that we have a limited time, a topic which has a time limit in its own right,

it's my great pleasure to welcome you to Brexit, where are we now,

apart from the short answer in the mess, there are longer answers to be provided

by three very eminent colleagues. First is Catherine Barnard, who needs no introduction,

but knows a great deal. Marcus knows a great deal. Marcus Gerring knows a great deal from

the international trade point of view. And the third colleague that you may not know is

Dr. Georges Barr, who's a visitor for cells for a fortnight, he has a distinguished career in EFTA and therefore

will be able to give us a broader perspective on how this is working. The way it will work

will be that the three of them will give short introductions

and then it will be a question of open for questions from the floor. So Catherine.

Well thank you very much indeed. Very nice to see so many of you here. So I'm going to talk about

Brexit. Where are we now? In part from the UK perspective, in part from the EU perspective.

Now, as we know, Theresa May's deal was voted down in a motion, so not legally binding last week, and dramatically so, 230 votes.

And according to the sum, which has tremendous insight on these matters, the deal is as dead as a dodo.

I'm not so sure, and I'll come back to that in a minute.

So the question is, why was there indeed a no vote on the Article 50 withdrawal agreement?

And just to be clear, for those of you who are not following this so closely,

all that was being voted on in House of Commons last week was the divorce text

and the political declaration on the

future arrangement, but the political declaration is not legally binding.

So why did the vote against it? Well, for Brexiteurs, it was first and foremost about the backstop

and the fact that the backstop doesn't have the equivalent of Article 50 built into it.

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