Blunder Central.

• Author: Lachman, D.

With hindsight, it is easy to identify a number of mistakes that the United Kingdom made in negotiating the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement. It is also not difficult to see how those mistakes contributed to the economic and political uncertainty that has cost the country's economy so dearly.

Among the more egregious of those mistakes was then-Prime Minister Theresa May's decision in March 2017 to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty before political agreement had been reached domestically as to what the United Kingdom's goals would be in the Brexit negotiations. That triggering put the United Kingdom in a weak negotiating position relative to its European partners. It set the clock ticking for the two-year period within which negotiations were to be completed, raising the possibility that the United Kingdom could crash out of Europe without a deal by...