Today’s handshakes will be accompanied by pitying smiles
senior EU official involved in planning the summit.
“Everyone knows it looks next to impossible for May to sell this deal, even though it’s the only one she’ll get.”
With the deal looking dead on arrival in Westminster, the Brussels back-channels are already gaming out what happens when Mrs May loses the “meaningful vote” and returns empty-handed asking for fresh favours.
According to senior diplomatic sources, Mrs May’s team has already hinted in high-level consultations with Europe that if she loses the vote on the deal, she will seek fresh concessions on the Irish backstop mechanism.
EU sources involved in the talks are already bracing for this, but all warn that any tweaks will be cosmetic, since the parameters of the deal are set by the geography of Ireland and Europe’s determination to defend its single market. “We can change the staples and the colour of the paper, but beyond that, we can’t do much,” says a diplomat from a country usually friendly to the UK. “The EU will not give up the backstop. It cannot. So you can do some tweaks, but will that really make a difference?”
Anything more fundamental, another EU diplomat warns, risks unravelling a deal which, while it may have left MPs fuming, has also upset several EU member states who believe Michel Barnier gave up too much leverage by agreeing to write a customs deal into the divorce treaty.
If the “no” vote comes, there is a presumption that Article 50 could be Ninety-one Tory MPs – Leavers and Remainers – have indicated they would vote against the Brexit plan.
David Davis Owen Paterson
John Whittingdale
David Jones Julian Lewis Steve Baker Sir Mike Penning Sir Edward Leigh Andrea Jenkyns Ben Bradley Maria Caulfield Ross Thomson Nadine Dorries Andrew Bridgen Sheryll Murray Lee Rowley Anne Main Charlie Elphicke James Duddridge Andrew Lewer Martin Vickers
briefly extended, until July at the latest, but only to enable the British to elect a new prime minister, hold a general election, a second referendum, a Norway/EFTA negotiation – or whatever else emerges. Even this is not guaranteed.
There is some admiration for Mrs May’s doggedness, but there is also Philip Davies James Gray Crispin Blunt Philip Hollobone Bill Wiggin Nigel Evans Tim Loughton Robert Courts
Michael Tomlinson
Jo Johnson Heidi Allen Dominic Grieve Esther McVey Rehman Chishti Suella Braverman Hugo Swire Steve Double Royston Smith Grant Shapps
Daniel Kawczynski
David Evennett Rob Halfon
Gordon Henderson
John Baron rising impatience with Britain’s inability to make up its mind.
“The UK should not presume an extension,” says one wearied EU Brexit negotiator. “Just look at the Spanish using their leverage now over Gibraltar. It has to be unanimous, so other member states may attach conditions.” At the heart of this is the belief in Brussels and EU capitals that Britain’s political class has still not confronted the hard choices posed by Brexit.
The belief that technology can deliver an invisible Irish border, or that a “go-it-alone” trade strategy can really offset the costs of leaving the EU single market and customs union, is one that irks – and which Europe believes will be painfully exposed.
Whether that penny drops after a “no-deal” scenario or in the confined political space between a December “no” vote and the March 29 “cliff edge”, no one can predict.
And even if Britain’s parliament did allow such an act of economic self-harm to take place, Europe reckons it would not take long for reality to reassert itself. The same old questions about the trade-offs between sovereignty and market access, or between a customs union or the union of the kingdom itself, would be back and this time the UK would be in no position to dodge them.
Brussels has been here before. Remember the 2015 about-turn of Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, who won a referendum rejecting an EU austerity package on a Sunday, only – after peering into the economic abyss – to sign up to an even tougher package the following Thursday?
Is that the fate that awaits the British prime minister, whoever that may be?
“Just look at Tsipras,” concludes one diplomat. “He did a 180 degree about-turn, and he’s still there.”