Brexit: UK can unilaterally revoke article 50, says EU court
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
One possible effect of this is that other countries will now try threatening to exit the EU, hoping to pressure it for special opt-outs and rebates. (As the UK has succesfully done in the past.) If they can revoke the invocation of Article 50, it would seem that they have nothing to lose.
Although the complete disaster that Brexit has been so far coupled with the hard line taken by the EU and even by third countries like Norway (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/07/norwegian-p...) do look very discouraging to countries looking to try this. We'll see how it plays out.
From the point of view of certain Brexiters this is a hard line. Though I agree that it isn't really that hard. It's just to continue enforcing what the EU currently is.
EDIT: There is the hard line of the exit bill, though. Although I believe that that has been negotiated down from a humongous sum to a merely enormous one.
There were things like pensions that were effectively decided on long ago. The 1985 budget said "the salary budget this year will be...; the member countries promise to pay the related pensions later, whatever the sum turns out to be." Ditto other years. Someone's now gone though past budgets and tried to sum up all those non-numbers (both pensions and other future commitments). Must've been a terrible job.
(Edit: fixed conflicting use of x.)