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"At times our need for a sympathetic gesture is so great, we care not what exactly it signifies or how much we have to pay afterwards."

Forgive the delving into my fifth year English homework. (Before you ask: EM Forster, A Room with a View, the homework was rather a long time ago.) But, when someone has said it better before, why try to say it again?

Theresa May's speech is indeed, above all else, an attempt at a "sympathetic gesture", an admission that the UK government is willing to pay tens of billions of taxpayers' cash to the EU over the next couple of years, and acknowledgement that there will have to be a limited, but extended period of time - a transition period - where the relationship between the UK and the EU might not actually change very much.

It is an offer, not a blinding revelation, but a limited flash of ankle to her continental counterparts.

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