LONDON — Britain will launch the process of leaving the European Union within six months, Prime Minister Theresa May said on Sunday (Oct 2), in a move that suggests the process of Brexit could be completed by early 2019.

Mrs May intends to trigger Article 50 — the official legal notification to Britain’s European Union partners that it is going to leave the bloc — “by the end of March”, she told the Conservative party conference in Birmingham on Sunday.

There will be no “sudden and unilateral withdrawal” in order to protect businesses and employers, she stressed, adding that she wants to “avoid setting the clock ticking” before plans are put into place for good negotiations.

Britain voted in a June referendum to leave the EU, but has not formally notified the bloc of its intentions by invoking the article of the EU treaty that would trigger negotiations. Doing so will launch two years of talks to work out the details of Britain’s future relationship with the single market.

This means Britain would be out of the EU by March 2019.

“There is still some uncertainty, but the sky has not fallen in,” she says.

“Having voted to leave I know that the public will want to see on the horizon the point at which we leave the European Union.”

Earlier, she had told the BBC that she wanted to “give voters clarity about the timescale we will be following” and also hoped the announcement would lead to a “smoother process of negotiation” with Brussels.

The new timetable may exacerbate concerns among investors that the government will pursue what’s become known as a “hard Brexit”.

That would see it willingly surrender membership of the EU’s single market for trade in return for more power over immigration, law-making and the country’s budget.

But European powers keen to dampen euroscepticism in their own backyards have been taking an increasingly hard line, warning that Britain cannot expect special treatment on trade and immigration.

Access to the European single market means allowing free movement of people, they said. But Mrs May had said she wants to curb the yearly influx of hundreds of thousands of people from other parts of the EU.

She sought on Sunday to dispell the notion that there a “trade off” between immigration and trade deals.

“There’s no such thing as a choice between a hard Brexit or soft Brexit,” she told party members at the conference in Birmingham.

“Too many people are defining our future relationship with the EU by the past,” she added.

“What we are talking about now is very different. We are going to leave the EU. We are going to be a fully independent nation. We are going to have the freedoms to make our own decisions on a whole host of matters.”

Mrs May also announced on Sunday a Great Repeal Bill, ending the authority of EU law once Britain leaves the union.

It will overturn laws that make EU regulations supreme, enshrine all EU rules in domestic law and confirm the British Parliament can amend them as it wants.

“This marks the first stage in the UK becoming a sovereign and independent country once again,” Mrs May told London’s The Sunday Times newspaper. “It will return power and authority to the elected institutions of our country. It means that the authority of EU law in Britain will end.”

On the face of it, Mrs May — who will deliver her keynote closing speech at the party conference on Wednesday — is in a strong position.

Opinion polls put the Conservatives well ahead of the deeply divided main opposition Labour Party under their veteran leftist leader Jeremy Corbyn. But she has ruled out holding a general election before one is due in 2020, telling The Sunday Times it would “introduce a note of instability”.

And when Article 50 is triggered, it is likely to be a painful process. This could worsen the decades-old arguments between eurosceptic and more pro-EU Conservatives, already inflamed by the referendum.

“The Brexit negotiations will take much longer and be far more complicated than many British politicians realise,” said Mr Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform. AGENCIES