Brexit plan gets airborne – then nosedives
Divisions ruin May’s day as Northern Ireland, Scotland and London all press for special treatment
AFTER 18 months of phoney war – of talking, positioning and negotiating behind the scenes – the rickety craft of Theresa May’s Brexit strategy briefly took flight yesterday, and then promptly nosedived back to earth.
Within hours of Ireland’s state broadcaster reporting that the Prime Minister had agreed that the UK would ensure “continued regulatory alignment” between Northern Ireland and the EU, political gravity took over.
If the game of leaking the compromise was to railroad Mrs May into signing off the deal at her lunch with Jean-claude Juncker, it backfired spectacularly, exposing this most carefully worded of texts to more scrutiny than it could bear.
Wrapped up in the language was a subtle compromise that officials had worked on for the best part of a month, and tried to be all things to all parties.
The UK had not been forced to agree to Ireland’s initial demand for “no regulatory divergence”; instead it was electing to use newfound freedoms after Brexit to maintain convergence.
To Dublin the compromise gave clear reassurance that Northern Ireland would not diverge, obviating the need for a return to a hard border, while simultaneously giving Arlene Foster’s Democratic Unionists a promise that the “alignment” would only be in the sectors that were relevant to the Good Friday Agreement.
It was at this moment that Brexit’s
IT COULD not have looked better for Theresa May as she headed for Brussels yesterday.
A leaked text from a document supposedly agreed between the British and Irish governments appeared to show a deal had been struck as leaders scrambled to arrange celebratory press conferences to mark the occasion.
A jubilant Donald Tusk hinted that the next stage of talks between the UK and EU was imminent and advisers around the Prime Minister appeared optimistic.
There was even talk of Mrs May’s lunch with Jean-claude Juncker, the European Commission president, being used to thrash out the terms of a trade deal, with the terms of the EU divorce bill already in the bag.
But not for the first time in Mrs May’s administration, the plan quickly began to fall apart and, despite a rally causing the pound to rise to almost its highest level of the month, by 4pm it had crashed to its lowest level of the day.
The problems started when Mr Juncker decided to brief MEPS on the final deal in the European Parliament around mid-morning UK time.
Despite being warned not to leak the 15-page report, which set out the terms of Britain’s withdrawal, just an hour later Philippe Lamberts, a Green MEP, was briefing journalists outside the European Commission’s headquarters, and issuing a press release celebrating the British concession.
“It seems the British Government is now coming to terms with reality and is finally willing to make the necessary concessions to allow us to move on to stage two of the negotiations,” it said.
The document set out plans to quell Irish fears about a hard border, stating there would be “continued regulatory alignment from those rules of the internal market and the customs union which now or in the future support north-south co-operation and protection of the Good Friday Agreement”.
The wording was immediately hailed on Twitter by Simon Coveney, the Irish foreign minister, as a victory, while Mr Tusk, the president of the European Council, tweeted: “Tell me why I like Mondays! Getting closer to sufficient progress at December Euco [European Council].”
But at the DUP’S Belfast headquarters, the leaked text was greeted with alarm. Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the party’s chief whip, publicly rubbished the guarantee on regulatory alignment, saying: “That is not our understanding of the UK Government’s position.”
The party said it would not settle for “creative ambiguity” – language that could be deliberately left open to interpretation at a later date.
Fearing a classic fudge by a government desperate to get on with trade talks, Arlene Foster, the DUP leader, hastily arranged a televised statement for 2pm. She warned: “We have been very clear. Northern Ireland must leave the EU on the same terms as the rest of the United Kingdom. We will not accept any form of regulatory divergence which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the United Kingdom. The economic and constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom will not be compromised in any way.”
She went further, blaming the government of the Republic of Ireland for trying to amend the terms of the Belfast agreement by the back door. “Of course we will not stand for that,” she said.
Her accusation was exactly what No 10 had been keen to avoid.
As British diplomats watched Mrs Foster’s address on the TV screens in Brussels, “all hell broke loose”, according to one source.
Just two minutes after the statement, Mrs May broke off her lunch with Mr Juncker to phone Mrs Foster to reassure her that the Northern Irish border would not be re-drawn in the Irish Sea.
The call lasted 15 to 20 minutes, according to insiders, and ended without any agreement on how the wording should be changed. Elsewhere, Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, and Carwyn Jones, First Minister of Wales, took advantage of the confusion by demanding their own deals. If Northern Ireland could be given regulatory alignment with Ireland and hence the EU – which sounded a lot like staying in the single market and customs union – why should they not have the same deal?
Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, got involved, saying the capital would also like a different deal after Brexit. As the crisis spiralled out of control, Leo Varadkar, the Irish prime minister, ready to mark a major foreign policy success, postponed a press conference.
Mrs May’s long phone call with Mrs Foster forced her to delay a meeting with Mr Tusk, who had in turn cancelled a planned trip to the Middle East.
Diplomats from the 27 other EU countries were sitting in a room for two hours waiting for a deal to emerge, such was the expectation in Brussels.
In a hastily arranged statement
‘We have been very clear. Northern Ireland must leave the EU on the same terms as the rest of the United Kingdom’
around 4pm, Mrs May and Mr Juncker said no deal had been reached but offered assurances that it could come later this week. The Prime Minister said: “We’ve been negotiating hard and a lot of progress has been made and on many of the issues there is a common understanding and it’s clear, crucially, that we want to move forward together.
“But on a couple of issues some differences do remain which require further negotiation and consultation and those will continue, but we will reconvene before the end of the week and I am also confident that we will conclude this positively.”
One British source said there were still details that needed to be resolved: the future of the Irish border and the right of the European Court of Justice to have a say over EU nationals in the UK after Brexit.
Mr Tusk appeared baffled. He said: “I was ready to present draft EU27 guidelines tomorrow for Brexit talks on transition and future. But the UK and Commission asked for more time.”
As frustration over the delay spread to Westminster, Tories emerging from a briefing at around 5pm said they had been told that Mrs May had not agreed the proposal on regulatory alignment put forward by the Irish government.
Taking to the podium for his own delayed press conference just after 5pm, Mr Varadkar admitted he was “surprised and disappointed” that no agreement had been reached.
Making clear that the UK Government, EU and Irish teams had all agreed the text, Mr Varadkar said it had been Mrs May’s responsibility to ensure the DUP were on side.
Sources close to Mrs May claimed she realised too late that “two guns were being held to her head”, the DUP on one side and Scotland and London on the other. Downing Street insisted Mrs May had never expected to reach a deal yesterday, but the Parliamentary timetable told a different story: a major statement in the House of Commons scheduled for today, was pulled from the schedule last night.