As ‘Brexit’ clock ticks, UK seems adrift
EU grows tired of mixed messages
LONDON: One was accused of trying to sabotage Britain’s exit from the European Union and of treating colleagues like “pirates who have taken him prisoner”. Two others were described as “dangerous and deranged”. As for the man leading London’s talks on “Brexit,” he has been called “lazy as a toad” and “vain as Narcissus” and his colleagues “government morons”.
Such descriptions of Britain’s leaders are perhaps not all that surprising given the country’s often colourful political wars. Except they were issued not by opponents of the governing Conservative Party, whose lawmakers are negotiating the country’s departure from the 28-nation bloc, but by people in or close to it.
As discussions got serious this week in Brussels, amid open feuding, Cabinet splits and confusion over policy objectives back in London, Britain’s handling of its most important negotiations since World War II was starting to look shambolic. Nearly four months after Prime Minister Theresa May invoked Article 50, starting the clock on a two-year window to negotiate Britain’s departure, little or nothing of substance has been accomplished.
With the British currency languishing, the standard of living progressively squeezed and investors starting to take fright, there is markedly less bravado in London about a new age of opportunities for a “global Britain”.
“I am not sure that anybody is in control at the moment,” said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London. “There are about as many views about the direction of Brexit as there are members of the Cabinet.”
The chaos is being met with consternation elsewhere in the European Union, where negotiators say they are beginning to wonder if the British will ever decide on a coherent strategy.
“You hear more and more voices saying, ‘It is ridiculous what the Brits are doing’,” said Joachim Fritz-Vannahme, director of the Europe program at the Bertelsmann Foundation, a research institute based in Germany.
“Over the last 12 months, we have heard everything and the opposite: hard Brexit, soft Brexit, quick Brexit, long Brexit,” he said. “When you follow what is coming out of Theresa May’s Cabinet, it is not clear what vision Britain is opting for.”
To make matters worse, infighting over negotiating strategy and policies has become entangled with a leadership struggle: At least three senior Cabinet members are thought to be jockeying to replace May, whose position was severely — perhaps fatally — weakened when she lost a parliamentary majority in last month’s election.
The prime minister is pleading for an end to the ferocious “backbiting and carping” in the Conservative Party, and she lectured her Cabinet this week on the importance of keeping internal discussions confidential.
Her pleas came after reports that the chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, had said at a recent Cabinet meeting that public sector workers — who are subject to a cap on pay increases of 1%, when inflation is more than 2.5% — were overpaid compared with their counterparts in the private sector.
Mr Hammond, who has led the “soft Brexit” faction that favours prioritising the economy over considerations like immigration, then publicly blamed those seeking a quick, clean, break from the EU for the leaks.
Against this tumultuous backdrop, David Davis, the British secretary of state for exiting the European Union, was photographed with colleagues in Brussels on Monday sitting at the negotiating table without any documents or notes, while their EU counterparts had sheaves of position papers before them.
Things went only marginally better Thursday, when the European Union’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, emerged from a meeting in Brussels with Mr Davis to lament that he still had no idea of Britain’s positions on the most basic issues.