Political, Rants&Rambles

Peter Pan is forced to Grow Up

I was hoping that Theresa May knew or understood something about the brexit process that I was missing, and I’m sure that she must have more information. She’s the PM after all, the woman in charge.
Part of me was convinced that the only reason she had for being PM was the absolute convictions that although brexit was a disaster, with anyone else but her it would be an even more fucked up disaster ie. she would work in “damage limitation” mode making th most of her competency.
But at least from the outside it’s beginning to look as if she’s been caught up in the happy, clappy enthusiasm mode of some of her fellow prisoners in government, all of them trapped in the galley of the ship desperately rowing and subject to the flogging of “leave” campaigning zealots. As the months have gone by, it seems clear that rather than risk the difficulties of selling limited contributions to the EU in return for access to the single market or customs union, she’s settled for the clearest route out, and damn the financial consequences.
Some of the assumptions being made are beginning to look rather dubious. The idea that negotiations can be kept secret seem doomed to fail if the twitter riff sourced from the FAZ below are to be believed, and some of it does ring very true. I can imagine David Davis rattling on about his civil liberty battles with Ms May frowning in the background.
It’s also entirely believable that the UK government may well have underestimated the level of detail to be negotiated as part of agreeing citizens rights post brexit.
Basically we’re been governed by a bunch of broad brush cowboys who, thanks to the EU diplomatic corp. haven’t had to worry themselves about the detail for decades and now cannot conceive of the idea that the detail is where the devil might be found. Maybe if the EU were similarly slapdash all would be well but it must be clear to everybody by now that the EU is in love with the detail, with dotting the i and crossing the t.
I’m sure Merry Somerset Webb from the FT is right to suggest that in ten years we’ll all look back and wonder what the fuss was about, renegotiating (slightly) our trade deal with the EU. Well, maybe twenty years…

Today’s FAZ report on May’s disastrous dinner with Juncker – briefed by senior Commission sources – is absolutely damning.

1) May had said she wanted to talk not just Brexit but also world problems; but in practice it fell to Juncker to propose one to discuss.

2) May has made clear to the Commission that she fully expects to be reelected as PM.

3) It is thought [in the Commission] that May wants to frustrate the daily business of the EU27, to improve her own negotiating position. 

4) May seemed pissed off at Davis for regaling her dinner guests of his ECJ case against her data retention measures – three times.

5) EU side were astonished at May’s suggestion that EU/UK expats issue could be sorted at EU Council meeting at the end of June.

6) Juncker objected to this timetable as way too optimistic given complexities, eg on rights to health care.

7) Juncker pulled two piles of paper from his bag: Croatia’s EU entry deal, Canada’s free trade deal. His point: Brexit will be v v complex.

8) May wanted to work through the Brexit talks in monthly, 4-day blocks; all confidential until the end of the process.
 
9) Commission said impossible to reconcile this with need to square off member states & European Parliament, so documents must be published.
 

10) EU side felt May was seeing whole thing through rose-tinted-glasses. “Let us make Brexit a success” she told them.

11) Juncker countered that Britain will now be a third state, not even (like Turkey) in the customs union: “Brexit cannot be a success”. 

12) May seemed surprised by this and seemed to the EU side not to have been fully briefed.

13) She cited her own JHA opt-out negotiations as home sec as a model: a mutually useful agreement meaning lots on paper, little in reality.

14) May’s reference to the JHA (justice and home affairs) opt-outs set off alarm signals for the EU side. This was what they had feared.

15) ie as home sec May opted out of EU measures (playing to UK audience) then opted back in, and wrongly thinks she can do same with Brexit

16) “The more I hear, the more sceptical I become” said Juncker (this was only half way through the dinner)

17) May then insisted to Juncker et al that UK owes EU no money because there is nothing to that effect in the treaties.
 
 18) Her guests then informed her that the EU is not a golf club
 

19) Davis then objected that EU could not force a post-Brexit, post-ECJ UK to pay the bill. OK, said Juncker, then no trade deal. 

20) …leaving EU27 with UK’s unpaid bills will involve national parliaments in process (a point that Berlin had made *repeatedly* before).

21) “I leave Downing St ten times as sceptical as I was before” Juncker told May as he left

22) Next morning at c7am Juncker called Merkel on her mobile, said May living in another galaxy & totally deluding herself

23) Merkel quickly reworked her speech to Bundestag to include her now-famous “some in Britain still have illusions” comment

24) FAZ concludes: May in election mode & playing to crowd, but what use is a big majority won by nurturing delusions of Brexit hardliners?

25) Juncker’s team now think it more likely than not that Brexit talks will collapse & hope Brits wake up to harsh realities in time.

26) What to make of it all? Obviously this leak is a highly tactical move by Commission. But contents deeply worrying for UK nonetheless.

27) The report points to major communications/briefing problems. Important messages from Berlin & Brussels seem not to be getting through.

28) Presumably as a result, May seems to be labouring under some really rather fundamental misconceptions about Brexit & the EU27.

29) Also clear that (as some of us have been warning for a while…) No 10 should expect every detail of the Brexit talks to leak.

30/30) Sorry for the long thread. And a reminder: full credit for all the above reporting on the May/Juncker dinner goes to the FAZ