In the Brexit endgame, Britain has a winning hand

So, what became of the Cummings Terror? Earlier this month we were told that the civil service was in a state of blue funk, awaiting the deadly scythe of the Grim Reaper, Dominic Cummings. Now, suddenly, it is business as usual, with the Whitehall obstructionists preventing a Big Ben “bong” for Brexit, wrapping the HS2 white elephant in decorative ribbon for Boris and deploying all their usual tricks to ensure Britain’s 5G network is, very sensibly, entrusted to the capable hands of the Chinese intelligence service.

Clearly, the managers of decline are still in business, using all their influence to keep Britain on the downward trajectory set for it by the liberal elites. Sir Mark Sedwill, the Cabinet Secretary and head of the civil service, leads Dominic Cummings by three games to love. That is not a helpful message to send to Michel Barnier, Ursula von der Leyen and other keen spectators across the Channel who are weighing up the odds for the forthcoming Brexit trade negotiations.

As they know better than anyone – better, apparently, than most British commentators – the advantage in those negotiations sits heavily in Britain’s favour. Hence the bluster and threats, representing an attempted pre-emptive strike, a piece of psychological warfare designed to keep Britain in Theresa May mode, servilely acceding to all the demands of Brussels: to negotiate the political settlement before the trade deal, to defer to the fact there are 27 of them and only one of us, to behave like a prisoner petitioning a parole board for release…

The reality could not be more different. We enter these negotiations as a sovereign nation state, with the onus on Brussels to demonstrate why it should retain even the most vestigial influence in our commercial policy. We have a £94 billion trade deficit with the EU: are we seriously to imagine European business (and governments) is not petrified at any threat to that dripping roast? If the trade talks were to fail the EU would further forfeit a sum of £39 billion (almost certainly more) if we were to walk away.

As for the 27-1 ratio, that is a delusion. Look at our opponents across the chessboard: Emmanuel Macron, the failed Jupiter who aspired to integrate Europe, only to see his own country disintegrate, headed for electoral defeat in two years’ time; or Angela Merkel, the discredited Empress of Europe, her coalition threatened, her economy hovering close to recession, her chosen successor already a busted flush and her days as chancellor coming to an end. Italy’s Heath-Robinson coalition, too, is as precarious as its banking system.

The 27-1 imposture received a shattering blow last week when Alexander von Schoenburg, editor-at-large at BILD, Germany’s largest-selling newspaper, published a devastatingly honest appraisal of Brexit and what a disaster it is for the EU. Testifying to the true balance of power, he told Britain: “Your economy is bigger than the 18 smallest EU countries combined. This means in economic terms that the EU will lose not just one member state – but shrink from 28 members to ten.”

That is the reality that is being recognized across Europe – everywhere except in the Berlaymont building in Brussels. Even there its denizens have sufficient awareness of the blow they are suffering to order the Union Flag to be taken down from its mast under cover of darkness. There will be no public ceremony for this act of decolonization. The EU is losing its second largest economy (also the fifth largest in the world), a nuclear power with a permanent seat at the UN Security Council. In compensation, it is considering accession requests from Serbia and Montenegro.

Britain has been sleepwalking since 2016, anaesthetized by the sheer weight of mendacious propaganda from the Brussels kleptocracy and the EU’s fellow travellers at Westminster, in Whitehall, at the BBC and from all the other anti-national forces of Europhile subservience. It is time to wake up to the strength of our own position and the weakness of our opponents – for that is what the EU nomenklatura, reassured by its fifth column within the British establishment, has become.

Boris Johnson has to insist, from day one, that the trade negotiations are conducted in a totally different style from the withdrawal agreement. He must declare that these are one-to-one negotiations, conducted between equals. Britain’s demands and red lines must carry every bit as much weight as the EU’s. No more “sequencing”: all issues must be addressed simultaneously by dedicated teams, starting in February.

There should be no question of Britain being held to ransom for months over the single issue of fisheries, threatened with no progress unless our waters are conceded for 25 years to French, Dutch and other EU fishing fleets. It must be made crystal clear that the UK government will not betray the interests of British fishing communities. The financial figures may be small; but the totemic significance in terms of national sovereignty and trust in government is sufficient to reinstate the Red Wall to Labour in the north if Boris reneges on that trust. It is crucial to his future majority.

If the EU plays hardball then, for the first time, Britain must reciprocate. No bluster, no aggressive soundbites – just a firm pledge that if the EU cannot get its act together, recognize new realities and progress all-round negotiations by May, then the United Kingdom, without waiting for the 31 December deadline, will depart on WTO terms in the summer. The old EU game of cobbling together a treaty in the final twelve hours before deadline must no longer be indulged.

“It’s impossible to conclude a trade deal in 11 months,” is the Brussels plaint. Of course it is, if you devote the first seven months exclusively to fisheries. That nonsense must no longer be tolerated. Everything must be discussed in parallel from day one. Even for the sclerotic EU bureaucracy there is no reason why an agreement cannot be concluded by the end of the year. For all its faults, the British civil service routinely fields Bill teams that endlessly redraft legislation as it is constantly amended in both houses of Parliament; the Brussels procrastinators could learn from their diligence.

Unfortunately, at the moment, the signs are that the diligence of the civil service is being channelled into its old rut: frustrating the will of ministers since they represent that ultimate evil entity, the electorate. In that context it was a mistake for the Prime Minister to suggest some kind of crowdfunded Brexit bong from Big Ben, instead of simply ordering officials: “Do it.” It is a poor beginning to the final round of Brexit. It is to be hoped that, from now on, the Johnson/Cummings axis will raise its game.