After months of speculation and pressure Theresa May bowed to the inevitable this week and set out her Brexit negotiating position.
The Plan, as she called it, is a bit like a badly boiled egg, very hard in some places and in others, surprisingly soft.
The big surprise has been the announcement that the UK would leave the single market.
To my mind, however, this was inevitable as you cannot remain in it without accepting free movement of labour and the rule of the European Court, both of which, she had previously stated was unacceptable.
Instead the Prime Minister wants a “new comprehensive bold and ambitious free trade agreement”.
For UK farmers and the food industry who currently export over 70% of their product into EU markets this raises two fundamental questions.
Firstly, how long will it take to secure this new Free Trade Deal and secondly what happens to UK food exports if there is no agreement by the time we exit the EU in March 2019.
The EU/Canada trade deal took seven years to agree and it is still bogged down in twenty seven national parliaments across the EU who have yet to sign it off.
Reaching agreement on a UK/EU trade deal, however, should be easier as our exports already meet the same standards and rules.
Nevertheless a two year timescale is extremely challenging.
So, what happens, if under Article 50 we are out the EU in March 2019 but no post Brexit trade agreement is in place?
Will food exports such as sheep meat just fall off the cliff edge when high EU tariffs are slapped on them making us uncompetitive in EU markets?
That point has been rammed home time after time by UK industry and the Prime Minister appears to have heard the message and conceded there must be a transitional arrangement.
That is good news for UK farmers as it will allow time for our industry to prepare and adapt to the new post-Brexit trading relationship with the EU.
She also announced that the UK is to opt out of part of the customs union so we are free to negotiate our own trade deals.
From a UK farming point of view this should send shudders down our spines.
Why? As members of the EU, our markets, especially for beef are heavily protected by TRQs (import quotas) and high import tariffs.
And, when the EU negotiates with third countries such as Brazil and the USA, agriculture imports are always a massive red line for the negotiators.
Will the UK agriculture industry still enjoy that high priority when our own Government negotiates free trade deals, including the EU one, in future? Or, will the car and financial services industry take priority and agriculture is deemed less important?
If that was the case there is a real risk the gates are opened up to allow cheap food to flood into our markets.
That would leave the livestock sector in Scotland facing a very uncertain future indeed.
Of course, this is only the opening salvo in the negotiations and there is a long hard road ahead before agreement is reached.
The only thing guaranteed over the next two years is heaps and heaps of uncertainty.
