I’ll be a charming brexit to win the best Brexit deal
Davis vow as EU accused of blackmailing us over divorce bill
DAVID Davis vowed to play the ‘charming b******’ in Brexit negotiations yesterday, as ministers’ frustration with Brussels stubbornness burst into the open.
The Brexit Secretary said negotiations were already ‘ tense’ – and warned they were set to ‘get tougher’ as the EU digs in its heels over demands for a divorce payment of up to £90billion.
He said: ‘We are in a difficult and tough and complicated negotiation. I said from the beginning, it will be turbulent.
‘This is the first ripple and there will be many more ripples along the way.’
His intervention came just hours after International Trade Secretary Liam Fox accused the EU of trying to ‘blackmail’ Britain by linking talks on a future trade deal to payment of the divorce bill.
The tough talk came after a bruising week of negotiations in Brussels which ended in deadlock over the issue of the EU’s extraordinary financial demands.
Speaking in Washington yesterday, Mr Davis said he remained a ‘ determined optimist’ about Brexit, and said there was no reason why the UK and EU should not be able to strike a good free trade deal, providing Brussels did not use the exercise to try to punish Britain for leaving.
But he warned that he was prepared to get tough – and recalled being described as a ‘ charming b******’ during his role as Europe minister in the mid-1990s.
‘I was rather proud of it, because you had to be both – charming but sometimes difficult,’ he said.
‘And that is the nature of what you are seeing now. There are going to be tough times but the trick is to remember that at the end of it we want an outcome which is in everyone’s interest.’
Mr Davis used the speech to the US Chamber of Commerce to issue a thinly-veiled warning to Donald Trump about the dangers of the US retreating into economic protectionism.
‘The answer to the problems of the West cannot be to turn our back on globalisation and trade – it's to lead the world forward once again,' he said. But he acknowl-edged it may be impossible to complete new free trade deals until after Britain has left the EU and completed any 'transitional period' - meaning new deals could be as much as five years away. The Brexit Secretary described the withdrawal negotiations as ‘the most complex in history’, adding: ‘Time is the enemy.’
Europe’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier warned this week that he would try to block the start of trade talks this autumn unless the UK agrees to settle a divorce bill that includes British taxpayers continuing to fund European aid and environmental pro-grammes after we have left. Speaking on a trade mission to Japan yesterday, Dr Fox hit back angrily, saying: 'We can't be black-mailed into paying a price on the first part. We think we should begin discussions on the final set-tlement because that's good for business, and it's good for the prosperity both of the British people and of the rest of the peo-ple of the European Union.' The European Parliament's chief negotiator Guy Verhofstadt yesterday claimed the EU had bent over backwards to accommodate the UK during negotiations with David Cameron two years ago. Mr Verhofstadt said: 'I was in the room at the time of the rene-gotiation and substantial addi-tional exceptions were offered - a new special status of EU mem- bership, with an opt-out from the core principle of 'ever closer union' and an emergency brake on benefits for EU workers. `I even offered to work with the UK to develop a new form of asso-ciate EU membership, but UK ministers rejected it, as they argued that it would mean losing the UK's seat at the top table.' ■ DAVID Davis and Ruth David-son yesterday rallied behind Theresa May's bid to remain in Downing Street long-term. The Brexit Secretary said he expected the Government to last the full five years', despite Lord Heseltine saying this week that Mrs May's administration would collapse within two years. And Scottish Tory leader Ruth David-son said Mrs May was 'absolutely' the right person to lead the party into the next general election.
‘There are going to be tough times’
WHEN the annals of Brexit are finally written, the last week may be viewed as the moment the phoney war ended and battle lines were truly drawn. After months of shadow boxing and demands from Brussels for Britain to begin ‘ negotiating seriously’, Brexit Secretary David Davis laid down a set of concrete proposals which he believes can shape Britain’s future relationship with the EU and usher in a new age of mutual prosperity.
At its heart is a new bilateral free-trade agreement that works for both sides; a blueprint for doing business with the single market without being inside it – no tariffs and no petty protectionism.
Of course there will be many hurdles to clear between now and Britain’s departure from the EU but, given good faith on both sides, none is insurmountable.
After all, there is already free trade between us. We’re about to incorporate all existing EU legislation into British law. And although free movement will end as we take back control of our borders, Mr Davis has pledged to secure the rights of all EU nationals living in Britain.
There could hardly be a better starting point for constructive talks.
But where Britain offers vision, flexibility and co-operation, Brussels has responded with nothing but intransigence and demands for money. Chief negotiator Michel Barnier flatly refuses to discuss trade or anything else, until the UK agrees to stump up a huge divorce payment – possibly as much as £90billion.
And in a bizarre attempt to exert moral pressure, he implied that if Britain withdrew from long-term EU spending commitments, aid programmes in some of the world’s poorest countries could be jeopardised – trust funds for the Central African Republic, handouts in the Caribbean, loans to Ukraine.
Has no- one told him that we already spend an eye-watering £13billion a year on foreign aid – more than any other EU nation and twice as much as his own country, France?
How dare he lecture us on our obligations to the developing world!
Meanwhile, Labour performed another risible volte-face this week, declaring itself the party of ‘soft’ Brexit.
Deputy leader Tom Watson said this meant Britain could stay in the single market permanently, therefore remaining under the control of the European Court and continuing to allow free movement.
So for soft Brexit, read no Brexit at all. Labour has become the party of Remain – betraying millions of its own voters and giving Mr Barnier a glimmer of hope that if he can keep stonewalling until the next election, he may yet keep Britain in the EU.
The other key moment of the week was Theresa May’s welcome – if ambitious – announcement that she plans to lead the Tories into the next election. She also let it be known that she would go over Mr Barnier’s head to break the Brexit deadlock and appeal directly to the elected leaders of Germany, France and other individual nations.
Unlike the unaccountable Brussels commissars, Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and the rest are keenly aware that they have more to lose than we do if these talks fail. Mr Barnier is their servant and they will not put up with his mulishness much longer if it threatens their own commercial interests.
So we must stand up to him and continue to insist that trade talks and the divorce terms have to be discussed together. We must also keep ramming home the fact that in March 2019 the UK is due to leave the EU – with or without a deal.
As Mr Barnier says, the clock is ticking. But he is in a far weaker position than he pretends. We should call his bluff.