Barnier’s ultimatum on lengthy delay

MICHEL Barnier threw down the gauntlet last night by insisting a long Brexit delay would only be granted if Britain opts for a softer deal or holds a second referendum or general election. The bloc’s chief negotiator met EU ministers yesterday where he said they were awaiting a formal extension request from Theresa May. The remaining EU2 leaders could decide whether to grant an extension to Article 50 – and its length – at a summit starting tomorrow. Mr Barnier repeated warnings that Britain must provide a ‘clear plan’ for why it wants a short or long extension, adding that a longer delay must be linked to a ‘new event’ – code for a second referendum or general election. He said: ‘My feeling is a longer extension needs to be linked to something new... a new event or political process.’

Last night it was claimed around 60 Eurosceptic Tory MPs made a behind-the-scenes bid to persuade EU leaders to veto the delay. It was discussed at meetings of the European Research Group, The Daily Telegraph claimed, with MPs said to have reached out to the Hungarian, Czech and Polish governments.

MICHEL Barnier strode on stage at the EU headquarters in Brussels yesterday, a model, as ever, of self-satisfied Gallic charm. He looked calm and well rested. So relaxed, in fact, he could have just returned from a weekend sipping ice-cool highballs on Pampelonne beach.

What a contrast here at Westminster, where our exhausted Prime Minister looks as though she hasn’t slept on her own pillow for weeks, let alone been anywhere near the French Riviera.

Negotiation is a finely balanced art of bluff and deception, and although wily Monsieur Barnier is not a man you would trust to share a bottle of water with crossing a desert, the sad truth is he has run rings around us from the get-go.

One of his most irritating tricks has been to portray himself as someone who regards the whole Brexit hullabaloo as a mere passing irritant, a mind-numbing piece of bureaucracy clogging up his in-tray. Negotiations? Bof! A tedious aside that his diary secretary has squeezed in between a postprandial game of pétanque and his early evening cinq à sept.

Here he was again, goading the British Government, expressing doubts about Theresa May’s chances of getting her deal through. Not, of course, he seemed to imply that he was much bothered.

‘Everyone should now finalise for a No Deal scenario,’ he told his audience. Nor did the Commons voting to stop us leaving without a deal make any difference. ‘Voting against a No Deal does not prevent from it happening,’ he scoffed.

Note how our own guileless leaders stew like autumn Bramleys over the idea of No Deal, whereas the oily Barnier treats the prospect with casual froggy insouciance.

Is he as relaxed about the UK leaving without a deal as he sounds? Of course not. No Deal gives EU leaders the night-sweats just as much as it does our own. This is simply how grown-ups barter. Such a pity. We Brits used to know how to play this game.

As for the Government’s plans to delay withdrawal from the EU, Barnier said he was cool on the idea and suggested Brussels might not necessarily even grant one. ‘What’s the point?’ he asked repeatedly. Nothing in Westminster has changed. Delaying withdrawal until June with no hope of a deal just means prolonged uncertainty.

BARNIER stared at the ground. He pawed at his neatly crimped fringe. He affected that wounded manner of a car salesman whose customer has just spurned ‘the deal of a lifetime’.

Another maddeningly bravura performance, in other words.

Meanwhile, back in the Commons, energy minister Claire Perry was cutting up rough during Business questions.

Clive Lewis (Lab, Norwich South), an excitable exsoldier dedicated to the Corbynite cause, had asked her a question about cuts to renewable energy.

Redoubtable Claire is a hot-breathed ex-lawyer. The Business Department ball-breaker. She’s not a woman who takes kindly to being patronised, nor should she be. Something about the manner of Lewis’s question irritated her and she snapped.

His response was to bounce up and down, sticking out his tongue and waving his arms as if to say, ‘Ooooh, I’m sooo scared’.

Perry lowered her Amazonian frame across the dispatch box and accused Lewis of being a misogynistic bully. ‘Perhaps he’s going to ask me to get on my knees next, Mr Speaker,’ she suggested. Steady! This was a reference to Lewis jokingly telling a male actor to ‘get on your knees, bitch’ at a Labour party conference fringe event.

Lewis and Perry remained at it throughout the session, mouthing insults across the chamber like two featherweights stubbornly refusing to unclench one another after the bell.

All the while, Speaker John Bercow, so incessantly loquacious the day before when he placed a dagger between the Government’s shoulder blades, uttered not a word.