Brussels dinner date disaster points to no deal

Sunday is the new Wednesday. At the dinner last night that was supposed to be decisive, Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen again kicked the can down the road, setting up Sunday as the new, final, final, extra-special final cut off point in the Brexit negotiations. How many of these Brussels deadlines that are final until they are not, when a new deadline is set, have there been in recent years?

It is easy in such circumstances to think that this game will go on for ever, that there is no end to the number of times deadlines can be breached. But it looks like false comfort, a habit learned by the hacks that risks obscuring what lies dead, straight ahead. This is no deal, unless Boris or the EU folds. And neither looks likely to.

In only three weeks, the transition period ends. If there is no agreement on replacing it with new arrangements, Britain and the EU will begin 2021 with no deal.

Forget all the diplomatic language for a moment. On the main sticking point – the level playing field of rules and the governance mechanism – there has been no progress at all and there is no sign of it either. The two sides have gone round in circles for months. The British take the position that the EU wants to keep the UK as a supplicant that can be punished. The EU side thinks the British are deluded in wanting zero tariff trade and the right to diverge to increase competitive advantage. They are hopelessly stuck.

Last night’s dinner was a final attempt by Boris to get von der Leyen to convince EU leaders to intervene and order the EU negotiators to move. In normal business dealings, or bilateral state negotiations, there is always a way. Not here when the gulf is so wide between the UK and EU views on sovereignty and power relations. Worse, the UK says the EU has hardened its stance in recent weeks. The EU denies this.

The British government strategy now rests on EU leaders at today’s meetings in Brussels deciding to compromise. This also looks like a lost hope. The EU 27 have plenty of other problems to deal with not related to Brexit.

In turn, they now expect Boris to fold, but they have long misunderstood his position and now expect the Prime Minister to do something that he is not inclined to do. For him it is a fundamental question of sovereignty – always has been since the start, since his former wife Marina (a skilled lawyer) explained that it is a question of legal fundamentals about who makes the rules and where power lies. Still, many prominent former Remainers continue to miss that this – who’s in charge and can you fling them out or not? – was for most Brexiteers at the heart of it.

Look out now for a last minute attempt by Brussels to pull the emergency brake – perhaps suddenly extending the transition by a month or two. It is unlikely, but not impossible, that Johnson would agree to that because it involves him conceding delaying being out from underneath EU structures and rules. Let’s see. Yet even if it happens, it doesn’t fix the fundamental fissure. The optimism that rests on yet more deadlines and endless talks looks, to me, misplaced. Unless Boris or the EU concedes in the next few days, no deal is coming.