UK PM Theresa May was speaking earlier today 2 Oct 2016

I've been out all day but re-tweeted to you on my way home so just posting now as I arrive through the doors.

The UK PM first confirmed the much-rumoured end-March deadline to trigger Brexit in an interview on the BBC this morning and has since addressed the Conservative Party Conference where she told delegates:

"We are going to be a fully independent, sovereign country - a country that is no longer part of a political union with supranational institutions that can override national parliaments and courts.

"And that means we are going, once more, to have the freedom to make our own decisions on a whole host of different matters, from how we label our food to the way in which we choose to control immigration."

Given the two year expiry time of the Lisbon Treaty-based trigger that means the UK will have left by the summer of 2019 and that is at least one uncertainty out of the equation.

What May also confirmed though was that immigration and UK sovereignty will be top of the negotiation agenda at the expense of the single market. That in itself only intensifies the overall uncertainty of how Brexit will pan out. She has denied that it's "hard Brexit" per se as but the jury's very much out on that.

May told The Andrew Marr Show that the process of leaving the EU would be "quite complex" but she hoped there would now be "preparatory work" with the remaining EU members so that "once the trigger comes we will have a smoother process of negotiation".

"It's not just important for the UK, but important for Europe as a whole that we're able to do this in the best possible way so we have the least disruption for businesses, and when we leave the EU we have a smooth transition from the EU."

The end-March deadline means that official negotiations will begin ahead of the French and German elections next year

So the passive Remain campaigner becomes a pro-active Brexiteer. Politics eh ? May's gloves are off now and she seems keen to get Brexit pushed through before going to the country again in the next scheduled General Election in 2020.

Expect the pound to open up lower in Asia and remain ( no reverse pun intended!) on the back-foot as I have been recommending for more than a while now.

Some of this confirmation will have been factored in though as rumours have been circulating for a while and with a market essentially short we can expect to see some profit coming off the table at some point. Keep selling those rallies though as the short play has a long way to run yet.

May also promised a bill to remove the European Communities Act 1972 from the statute book but the repeal of the 1972 Act will not take effect until the UK leaves the EU under Article 50.

She said this was an "important step", adding:

"That means the UK will be an independent sovereign nation, it will be making its own laws."

The BBC has more on today's developments here

UK PM May brings Article 50 to the table but the uncertainties remain