Theatrics and bluster backfire as Cox leaves Brussels bewildered
GEOFFREY COX has revelled in his role as the new showman of Tory politics ever since bursting on the stage at last year’s Conservative Party Conference quoting Milton in his luscious baritone – and last week in Brussels it seemed the scene was set for his greatest turn yet.
Earlier this year it was the booming Attorney-general’s legal advice that the Irish backstop could leave the UK trapped forever in the EU’S customs union that had been blamed as the cause of the historic 230-vote defeat of Theresa May’s Brexit deal.
And so it was on the reversal of that advice that Downing Street hoped to convince enough Brexiteer MPS to hold their noses and vote for Mrs May’s deal.
But the week began badly for Mr Cox. On Monday, The Daily Telegraph revealed in a front page story that he had already abandoned plans to demand a time-limit or a unilateral exit mechanism from the backstop – two of the Eurosceptics’ central demands.
Sensing perhaps that he risked losing his audience before the show had even begun, the article spurred Mr Cox into action. In a rare foray onto Twitter he wrote that The Telegraph’s report represented “misunderstood fag ends dressed up as facts”.
“Some of it is accurate,” Mr Cox said, “much more of it isn’t and what is not is far more significant than what is.”
The tortuous non-denial denial belied Mr Cox’s real problem, which was that no amount of obfuscatory rhetoric could hide the fact that the EU was sticking to its guns.
When Mr Cox arrived at Brussels’s Gare Midi on Tuesday with the Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay they refused to talk to waiting reporters, driving straight into the European Commission headquarters.
The two sides were at loggerheads. EU sources say that Mr Cox’s general bluster did nothing to endear him to either Michel Barnier, the aloof former French government minister or Sabine Weyand, the German technocrat and EU trade expert with a legendary grasp of detail.
And it was on the detail that the talks were foundering. EU and UK sources say that Mr Cox tried a number of different tacks to try to shift the basis of the negotiation, all of which left the EU side wondering if the Attorney General had been paying attention these last two years.
Mr Cox reportedly began expounding on the broad test of “reasonableness” and the view of the “man on the Clapham Omnibus” – concepts which baffled EU negotiators.
EU sources said that Mr Barnier made clear that the EU would accept independent “arbitration” on whether both sides were living up to the spirit of the agreement, but not on whether proposed UK solutions were actually delivering on the border question.
These were ultimately political questions that could not be subcontracted to a third party.
“This was the nub,” said one EU source. “At the point of impasse in the future negotiations, the EU wants the backstop to endure, to put a floor under what is possible – but the British ultimately wanted the right to walk away.”
The gulf was indeed huge, and it got worse over a dinner of tuna steaks on the fifth floor of the European Commission’s Berlaymont headquarters when Mr Cox started to argue that the entire backstop concept might be illegal under the European Court of Human Rights.
He referenced the recent legal challenge by Lord Trimble which left the European side shocked – along with British officials – since the Attorney General was now apparently arguing against the advice of the British Government’s own lawyers and the position of the Prime Minister.
“It backfired all spectacularly,” said another source.
“There was a feeling he was moving the goalposts,” added another official. “The backstop was negotiated with British lawyers, and now Cox was saying it might fall foul of a Human Rights institution which not so long ago Theresa May wanted to leave? It was crazy.”
Back in London Mr Cox attempted to lighten the tone with an appearance in the Commons on the Thursday, making jokes about “Cox’s codpiece”, the phrase that Eurosceptics used to disparage his work.
But the weak theatrics aside, it was clear yesterday that there was nothing to salvage from the wreckage of a negotiation that had been designed to close the gaps but left both sides further apart than ever.
A planned return by Mr Cox and to Brussels yesterday was cancelled and Mr Barnier, keen to get ahead of the blame-game, took the pre-emptive step of laying out the EU’S final offer.
Either Mrs May accepted the all-uk backstop that she had negotiated, or she could revert to the Northern Ireland-only backstop that she had originally rejected.
In short, no more fixes or finesses; only choices.