Europe too needs a Brexit deal
The leadership in the UK must hedge its bets carefully while negotiating an exit from the EU
hat kind of organisation threatens people who want to leave? Offhand, I can think of only three examples: mafia families, secret societies attempting to undermine the existing order, and religious cults. Arguably, the European Union is a bit of all of those, contrary to its view of itself as the very model of an idealistic, enlightened political entity. The next-but-last splenetic ultimatum from Michel Barnier, Europe’s chief negotiator and his friends, which David Davis, UK Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union since 2016, described with epic restraint as “discourteous” (only to have even this mild epithet fervently denounced by Barnier), was peculiarly startling.
First, it contained warnings that Barnier could scarcely have discussed with the heads of member states for whom the consequences would be critical. Is he seriously suggesting that Spain, whose economy would probably tank without British tourism, will happily agree to refuse landing rights to UK aeroplanes? Or that Italy — with 60 per cent youth unemployment — would welcome a trade war with us? You only have to say these things to realise how ridiculous they are. Then it failed to make clear who could possibly benefit from the punitive trade restrictions which the EU negotiators claim are imminent if the UK government doesn’t come to its senses? (Answer: China.)
Who exactly did Barnier consult before composing his vengeful wish list and — whoops — seeing it accidentally leaked to the media? (Answer: Germany.) Of course, Team Barnier insists that it is forced into these desperate measures — the punishment beatings to be meted out during the transition period which now, according to last Friday’s official pronouncements, is not itself “a given”, the permanent limitations on access to the single market, etc — because of the bone-headed paralysis of the UK Government. So trapped is UK Prime Minister Theresa May by the dissension within her own party that she is unable to tell us, as everybody reiterates endlessly, “what she wants”. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has famously reported a conversation in which she repeatedly demanded of May what she was asking for, only to have May repeatedly respond: “Make me an offer.” This anecdote, related apparently with some glee, was intended to make the British prime minister and her country look absurd.
But hang on a minute. Suppose we turn the description of this situation on its head. What follows is going to sound like wild wishful thinking, but bear with me. May might be genuinely paralysed by the split in her own front bench between fag-end Remainers and furious hard-line Brexiteers, but another way of seeing this position is that she is effectively stone-walling. The disagreements among her own side could be, quite inadvertently, providing a convenient way of avoiding an explicit enumeration of the UK’s conditions for a deal. By refusing to say “what she wants”, she is failing to provide Barnier with a list of minimal demands — which would immediately become maximum offers from the other side. On this interpretation, the increasingly hysterical and improbable threats being uttered by the EU negotiators — which seem to bear less and less connection with reality — arise out of actual panic.
It is absolutely essential at this point to keep reminding yourself that the EU needs a deal, too: that it has dangerous political fault lines between its own members and destabilising economic weaknesses within individual states. If time is running out, it is running out for everybody: French farmers, German manufacturers, Spanish resorts and Italian political leaders. Barnier insisted at a press conference last week that he was neither discourteous nor vindictive. Then, in the next breath, he claimed that if we didn’t accept the EU’s logic on the transition rules, we might not get any transition at all. So there. The pessimistic account of this deadlock is that, in the end, we will have to concede on everything and accept the EU’s implacable terms. But what if we don’t?
Transition period
What if, at five minutes to midnight, we set out an alternative deal that appeals more to the French farmers and German car makers than the EU’s take-it-or-leave-it notice to quit? What then? The existing splits within member states could open so wide as to swallow the whole EU project.
The transition period has now become central for both sides, which seems strange when you think that the last threat (or “statement”, as they call it in Europe) from Barnier was that it would last only 21 months. That would seem to put it more in sympathy with Brexiteers who want it to be shorter, rather than Remainers who want it to be longer. Yet it is the hard Brexit faction that is making more of a farrago of its terms.
My sympathies all along have been with the Jacob Rees-Mogg/John Redwood school of thought. But for the life of me I cannot see why we need a blood-curdling fight to the death over conditions that will be limited — and I trust the likes of Rees-Mogg and Redwood to see that they are limited — to less than two years. Any rules and regulations we are forced to accept during that time can be thrown out at the end of it. Any pieces of legislation enacted can have sunset clauses that automatically bring them to an end when the transition finishes. The Tories are now leading in the polls, remarkably enough. Please don’t blow all this up for the sake of theological purity, and risk giving ground to an unscrupulous Remain scare campaign and worse, an opportunistic Labour Party. What’s two years out of a nation’s lifetime?
Janet Daley is a political columnist and author. Her two novels are All Good Men and Honourable Friends.