In last-ditch bid for Brexit deal, leaders’ theatrics show the stakes

It can be hard, in the climactic days of a highstakes negotiation, to separate theatrics from substance — and so it was Saturday, when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, hung up after an hour-long phone call.

Von der Leyen said Britain and the European Union would send their negotiators back to the table in a last-ditch effort to close the gaps holding up an agreement on their post-Brexit trading relationship. Johnson’s aides released a photo of him on the phone, gesturing in the glare of an oldfashioned desk lamp, like a wartime prime minister battling on behalf of his country.

On Monday, the two leaders will speak again to determine whether a deal can be struck by a Dec. 31 deadline. If not, the European Union will begin imposing tariffs on British goods. Four and a half years after Britons voted narrowly to leave the union, the final act of the long-running Brexit drama is at hand.

With the outcome so uncertain, Britain and the EU are preparing their domestic audiences either for a landmark accord that will require compromise on both sides — or for a breakdown that will disrupt cross-channel trade, pitching both Britain and Europe into uncharted territory as the economies of both have been battered by the pandemic.

Nobody disputes that there are genuine differences between the two sides, ranging from state aid to fishing rights.

“There is still some distance to travel, and the distance has yet to be traveled, because it involves concessions that are painful,” said Mujtaba Rahman, an analyst at the political risk consultancy Eurasia Group. “That’s part of the reason both sides have a vested interest in being seen to be fighting.”

That is especially true of Johnson, who won election last year by promising to “get Brexit done.” Under the terms of the withdrawal agreement he signed with Brussels, Britain formally left the EU in January. But it agreed to abide by the bloc’s rules and regulations for an 11-month transition period until the two hammered out more permanent trade arrangements.

Now, Johnson will have to decide whether the EU’s demands are too much of a threat to his vision of British sovereignty. He knows that striking an accord that is seen as a betrayal of Brexit could be toxic, wrecking his relations with the faction of the Conservative Party that helped him to power. The same Brexiteers ruthlessly disposed of Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May.

After months of grinding negotiations, the two sides are wrestling over the same issues that have divided them from the start: state aid to industries — known as the “level playing field” — and EU access to British fishing waters.

Fishing has become a charged issue as President Emmanuel Macron of France, facing his own next election in 2022, has pushed for continued access for French fishing fleets. Johnson has made big promises to his country’s fishermen, who have complained for years about sharing Britain’s waters with continental boats, which in some areas can catch much more than British ones.

France’s Europe minister, Clément Beaune, warned that Paris would veto any unsatisfactory trade deal.