EU Referendum


Brexit: no sufficient progress


27/09/2017




We have no means of knowing what Mrs May expected from the visit of Donald Tusk to Downing Street yesterday, but there was a marked contrast between his arrival and departure. Greeted in the street on the way in by the Prime Minister, he was left to do a solo press statement afterwards, the tone of which can hardly have been what Mrs May wanted to hear. 

"I feel cautiously optimistic about the constructive and more realistic tone of the Prime Minister's speech in Florence and of our discussion today", he said. "This shows that the philosophy of 'having a cake and eating it' is finally coming to an end, or at least I hope so".

For Tusk, that was "good news", although he had to add that "no-one will ever tell me that Brexit is a good thing because, as I have always said, in fact Brexit is only about damage control, and I didn't change my opinion".

The sting was in the tail, though. "As you know, we will discuss our future relations with the United Kingdom once there is so-called 'sufficient progress'". The two sides, he said, "are working hard at it. But if you asked me and if today Member States asked me, I would say there is no 'sufficient progress' yet. But we will work on it".

A joint press conference might have helped convince us that the two sides were working together, but we didn't even get a statement from Mrs May. Instead, all we got was a terse communiqué from her spokesperson.

In the meeting, we are told, the Prime Minister began by re-stating her wish for a "bold and unique new economic partnership" with the EU, based on a joint commitment to free trade and high standards.

Returning to the theme of her Florence speech, Mrs May then repeated her wish to see the UK and the EU being "imaginative and creative" about the way this new relationship was established. She said she was "optimistic about a joint future which benefits both the EU and the UK".

The rest was in similar anodyne vein, revealing absolutely nothing. The PM and President Tusk, we learned, "welcomed the good progress that had been made on citizens' rights in the talks so far, and restated their commitment to finding a positive solution to the issue of the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland".

The PM "also stressed the importance of agreeing a period of implementation once Britain leaves the EU in March 2019". She said this "would build a bridge to that new relationship that ensures the process is smooth and orderly and creates as much certainty as possible for everyone".

Then, at the end of the meeting, the PM said her Florence speech had been "intended to create momentum in the ongoing talks". She said "it was important for EU negotiators to now respond in the same spirit". And that's all you get – statements which tell us more through their omissions than the extruded verbal material that was actually dished up.

Meanwhile, across the Channel, David Davis has decided to stay on the continent until Thursday. But he hasn't been meeting his opposite number. Instead, as part of a Europe-wide charm offensive, he has been talking to Belgium's foreign affairs minister.

He then travelled to The Hague to meet the Dutch foreign minister, while Liam Fox met the Dutch minister for foreign trade and business organisations before heading to Brussels to attend a meeting with European Commissioner for Trade, Cecilia Malmström. On Monday, Foreign Secretary Johnson embarked on a "two-day, three-country European trip", focusing on "security", visiting Prague, Bucharest and Bratislava.

But if these moves are part of Mrs May's plan to sideline Michel Barnier and appeal directly to Member State leaders, they are all wasting their time. Barnier has already made it clear that he has the full confidence of the Members, and the statement by Donald Tusk would seem to confirm that.

Pointing to the difficulties negotiators face is Belgian MEP Philippe Lamberts of the European Parliament Brexit Steering Group. He thinks the Irish border issue could play a bigger part in negotiations than the financial settlement, even to the extent that it could "derail" the talks.

The principles put forward by the UK Government, where the UK is out of the Single Market and the customs union, means there has to be a border and at the same time no border. " You can't have it both ways and I really fail to see how we can reconcile those differences", Lamberts says.

Thus do we get a tiny glimpse of the reality that the key players seem to be skirting round, perhaps recognising that their differences truly are irreconcilable. The Irish question is assuming that characteristics of an elephant in the room – of gigantic proportions.

Mixing metaphors outrageously, the Irish question is also the canary down the mine, the ultimate test of whether the Phase One issues can be resolved.

And it fruitless complaining that the EU has set an impossible test to pass. The moment Mrs May decided that the UK was going to leave the Single Market, she created the problem of turning a land border into one of the EU's external borders. As its creator, it is for Mrs May to resolve the problem.

The fact that the differences are irreconcilable, though, explains why the Prime Minister is being driven inexorably towards a "no deal" scenario. But, unable or unwilling to admit to problems of her own making, she seems intent on blame transference, putting the EU in the frame.

This gives her the opportunity of pulling the plug on the negotiations on Wednesday week, when she addresses conference. But there are persistent rumours that she may move even earlier than that, setting in train the moves necessary to secure and early departure by the end of this week.

If some feel that the idea of moving Brexit to 1 January 2018 is "far-fetched", they need to think back to the day after the referendum. Could anyone on 24 June 2016 have imagine that - 15 months down the line – the Prime Minister would have boxed herself to such an extent that she is running out of options.

Lamberts is not wrong in his analysis of the Irish question but, for different reasons, the financial settlement and the citizens' rights issue are just as irreconcilable. Without changing some of the key parameters (such as staying in the Single Market), Mrs May's only real option is to pull out of the talks.

What makes this, in her terms, an acceptable proposition is the belief that the resultant withdrawal from the EU is not damaging, politically or economically. This is someone who is convinced that the WTO option is sustainable and that any losses arising from reduced trade with EU Member States can be made up from increased trading with the rest of the world.

However, May also seems to be investing considerable effort into the scheme to sideline Barnier and appeal directly to the Member States. According to The Sun, this includes a social media campaign, conveying to hundreds of thousands Europeans key quotes from her Florence speech, plus targeted messages. The intention, it appears, is to explain the PM's new "grand bargain" offer directly to them.

The existence of this scheme and the other initiatives introduces an inconsistency into the grand scenario that Mrs May is planning to pull out of the talks. Why would such efforts be made to appeal directly to Member States is there was no intention to pursue negotiations.

Possibly, this points to an insurance policy, or it could simply be an attempt to build a relationship so that, when Mrs May does pull out, the "colleagues" are more inclined to seek a resumption of the talks. In other words, pulling out may be a bluff, in the expectation that unilateral action will shock the EU into making concessions to the UK.

We are now, however, introducing complexities which challenge the analysis, bringing us to the limits of plausibility. That brings us back to a step-by-step approach, where we rely on interpreting developments as they arise.

The next important development remains the response of M. Barnier to the current negotiation round, and whether he decides to tell the European Council that there has been "no sufficient progress" in the talks. Only when we're there can we take the next step.