A theatrical bust-up – but a deal is still the likely outcome

BREXIT-WATCHERS have long been waiting for the moment when trade talks with the EU would finally blow up into a full-scale row. Students of international negotiations know that a theatrical bust-up is often the prelude to a deal.

Yesterday, the moment finally appeared to arrive. Boris Johnson recorded a statement to camera telling Britain to prepare to leave the Brexit transition with no trade deal at the end of this year.

With just ten weeks to go, the PM said, it was clear that the EU was not willing to grant the kind of free trade deal it has struck with Canada and other partners.

‘They want the continued ability to control our legislative freedom, our fisheries, in a way that is obviously unacceptable to an independent country,’ he said.

Without a ‘ fundamental change of approach’ from the EU, there was no point continuing negotiations.

An hour later, the PM’s official spokesman went further, saying trade talks were ‘over’.

He said the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier should cancel a planned trip to London next week unless he plans to adopt a new approach.

No 10 had been considering yesterday’s showdown long before this week’s crunch Brussels summit. In the event, the EU made it easy for them. EU leaders removed a pledge to ‘intensify’ talks from their summit conclusions and said it was for the UK to ‘make the necessary moves to make an agreement possible’.

French president Emmanuel Macron said there were ‘no circumstances’ in which he would compromise on fishing despite the fact that, as he conceded yesterday, a No Deal outcome would leave French trawlers completely out in the cold.

With posturing of this kind, the PM felt emboldened to go further than he might have done in ramping up the rhetoric. So is it all theatrics? Only up to a point. The European Union has consistently misread the mood in No 10, where Brexit is seen as a long-term project which cannot be blown off course by the demands of short-term deal-making.

Some European Union leaders still seem to think they are dealing with a toughertalking version of Theresa May’s government, which never seriously contemplated walking away without a deal.

But the new administration in Downing Street is very different. Those at the heart of government will not accept constraints on the UK’s long-term ability to diverge from EU rules. They believe the ability for the UK to forge its own path is the whole point of Brexit. THE

Prime Minister wants a deal – and knows that leaving without one would be seen as failure.

Michael Gove, who is in charge of border preparations, is deeply concerned about the short-term disruption of leaving without a trade deal, which officials believe would disrupt vital supply chains and cause chaos in Kent.

And there are fears at the top of government that the collapse of talks would inevitably be acrimonious and spark a damaging trade war that could last for years.

So a deal is still possible – and still probably the most likely outcome.

But time is very tight. And both Brussels and the financial markets are under-pricing the real possibility that when the Prime Minister says he is ready to embrace No Deal, he might just mean it.