Why the EU’s too clever by half negotiating strategy leads to no deal

Towards the end of the ill-fated general election campaign last year, a seemingly mundane and bureaucratic decision was taken which could turn out to have profound consequences for Britain and the EU.

Civil servants communicated to Brussels that the UK government would accept the European Commission’s demand on the sequencing of talks. That is the EU wanted the terms of withdrawal agreed (money primarily) first. And only then could the talks move on to the future relationship.

Agreeing to this was directly at odds with the advice of the then Brexit Secretary David Davis and his team. You may remember Davis saying that sequencing would be “the row of the summer.” Soon after the election it became clear that it would not be the row of the summer. The officials, one assumes with the assent of the Prime Minister, had agreed to the EU’s sequencing.

The EU negotiating team then played a blinder, from the EU’s point of view, against a UK government struggling to stay afloat by depending on the DUP post-election.

The Irish border was introduced as the defining issue, when in truth it is a historical anomaly long fudged as it was with the Common Travel Agreement in 1923. The UK government had assumed that the EU understood the complexity and past bloodshed, and in the process underestimated the willingness of Brussels to use Ireland.

Over the months, the British did whittle down the demands on money, to an agreed £39bn, and sought and got a twenty month transition to reassure business. Only then, with the money all but in the bag and a “backstop” that in effect binds in Britain to dividing up the UK (unacceptable) or doing what the EU wants on customs, did the EU allow things in theory to move on to future arrangements in the expectation of ever more concessions from a UK which had left itself unprepared for “no deal”. Barnier was at it again today in his robotic way, saying the British must move more.

But the government’s white paper plan on the future – Chequers – has gone down extremely badly in Britain, annoying many Brexiteers and Remainers and looking doomed in parliament already. The EU’s view of Chequers as something to be pocketed, as a starting point for a further cave in, now looks like a serious tactical miscalculation.

Indeed, there is so much discontent at Westminster and beyond that even the withdrawal arrangements (not yet ratified) are now looking extremely shaky, meaning no deal becomes more likely all the time. The Prime Minister in Belfast today made it clear that she will not allow the UK to be divided up. The Irish government has threatened to ban British planes from flying over Ireland, while also all but pleading with the UK to honour the withdrawal commitments made from December last year and onwards. Is the Irish government working out the extent to which it has been used cynically as a pawn by Brussels? Pass.

For what the EU’s favoured sequencing sets up in October is the following situation.

The EU will want the terms of the withdrawal agreement signed off, but the document on future terms will be merely some vague waffle about trade and the promise of more talks during transition. Once the UK has started paying and is out, the EU will then be safe to make the future terms as terrible as possible or make the transition perpetual, a hopeless situation for the world’s sixth largest economy.

Someone in the civil service, and maybe even the Prime Minister, seems to have calculated that this will fly. But you only need to think about it with an understanding of the Tory party and the potential dynamics of public opinion to see why this is an obvious non-starter.

Think about the penny dropping. Britain agrees to sign cheques for £39bn. Britain leaves, moving into a twenty month transition limbo where it has no say over decisions. During that period, having given up any leverage on money it gets its feet nailed to the floor. Simultaneously, and it is almost laughable, European governments want and expect the help of Europe’s leading security and intelligence power (the UK) against an increasingly assertive Russia causing ever more trouble on Western European soil, in Sweden, Poland and the Baltic states.

Try selling this insult late this year and early next to British voters of all persuasions. The market for EU flag-waving will exist, but I suspect it will be small.

It’s electoral dynamite. Thats £39bn so we’ve got a good deal on trading and stuff? Er, no. That’s £39bn for some more talks much later which look like turning out to be a punishment beating from Brussels.

No deal, as they say.

Incidentally, some of my most pro-Brexit friends say that we must all stop calling it no deal, and instead starting talking of a switch to WTO rules fall back or a clean break or something of the kind. That is a forlorn hope. No deal fits neatly in headlines and will be easily understood if the EU persists with its approach.