EU doesn’t buy that bluff ... it’s expecting the UK to cave in

If Theresa May’s Brexit deal is voted down on Tuesday, the hope among many probrexit MPS is that it will open the door to a renegotiation with Europe to make the deal more palatable, particularly the Irish backstop.

For Brexiteers like Dominic Raab, the former Brexit secretary, the “number one” change would be to enable the UK to quit the arrangement unilaterally to avoid the UK becoming trapped in a customs union indefinitely.

If Downing Street shows some “will and resolve”, he argues, then the EU will be forced to change its mind in the face of such overwhelming opposition from the British parliament.

From an EU perspective this is dangerous wishful thinking, for three reasons.

Firstly, the Irish backstop is a “mutual” insurance policy, not something imposed by the EU. It was born of the fact that both sides are committed to maintaining the invisible Irish border that is at the heart of the Good Friday Agreement. The EU will not imperil that peace lightly.

The fact that British voices are demanding the right to quit unilaterally – whether or not an arrangement is in place to prevent a return to a hard border – only reminds the EU why they wanted the backstop in the first place. They see no good reason to take this issue on trust.

Secondly, there are EU politics to consider. The Irish backstop has become a political talisman, a litmus test for the bloc’s solidarity. If Ireland gets thrown under the bus to protect the commercial interests of French, German and Dutch traders, what message does that send to, say, a small Baltic state being menaced by Russia?

Brexit already threatens the internal cohesion and political balance of the EU. The decision to cling to the backstop should be seen in that wider context. Given all the EU’S statements on this, an eleventh-hour flip-flop would be a huge step.

Lastly, the EU will play hardball because it thinks it can. Why should it cave in on the backstop, argue EU diplomats, when they are perfectly confident that the British Government will do that anyway?

You could call this the “Tsipras strategy”. They recall that Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, won a referendum on Sunday rejecting Euimposed austerity in 2015 but by Thursday – after peering into the abyss – had signed up to an even deeper package of cuts.

Brexiteers might dream of the point where the UK issues a stark ultimatum to Europe – “give us a deal

Why should it cave in on the backstop, argue EU diplomats, when they are perfectly confident

without a backstop, or it’s no deal at all” – but Europe does not buy that bluff.

It sees (correctly) there is no majority for a cleanbreak Brexit in Parliament and therefore calculates that no British prime minister (even one with Mr Raab’s “resolve”) could ever access the febrile negotiating space where such an ultimatum would carry force.

And even if the EU did ditch the backstop, would Parliament support it? That is to risk a nearly blind Brexit that could then end in a Wto-only crash-out when the transition period expired. Viewed that way, the backstop is a safety net of sorts, for both sides.

Mrs May’s benighted deal is itself born of these hard political realities.

In short, there is no obvious incentive for the EU to change course since by holding firm, it will ultimately get its own way. It just needs to sit tight, and squeeze.