United Kingdom: EU wants concrete Brexit proposals
The European Union is thoroughly sick of Brexit, said Mikey Smith and Dan Bloom in the Daily Mirror. That much was made clear during British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s visit to Luxembourg this week for talks with EU officials on how the U.K. can leave the bloc on Oct. 31 without a chaotic no-deal divorce. EU bureaucrats griped afterward that Johnson still hasn’t offered a proposal to replace the withdrawal deal negotiated last year by his predecessor, Theresa May. Johnson helped kill that plan in Parliament, arguing that the deal’s “Irish backstop”—intended to prevent a hard border between the U.K. province of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, an EU member—would keep all of Britain bound by the bloc’s rules indefinitely. Boris has now promised that with his leadership the U.K. will “explode” from its EU “manacles” like the Incredible Hulk. But he acted more like the “Incredible Sulk” while away, skipping a joint press conference with Luxembourg’s prime minister, Xavier Bettel, because a few booing anti-Brexit protesters had gathered nearby. Standing next to an empty lectern, an irate Bettel said it was time for Johnson to “stop speaking” and “act.” Britain’s Parliament has passed a law ordering Johnson to request a Brexit extension if he fails to secure a deal by Oct. 19, but with the EU running out of patience, there’s no guarantee it will grant a stay.
Boris will get a deal, “or something that can plausibly be presented as one,” by the end of October, said Janet Daley in The Daily Telegraph. The EU simply will not risk letting the U.K. crash out of the bloc, because the chaos caused by new trade barriers would cripple the Irish economy and send Germany into recession. Remember, “this isn’t chess—it’s poker,” and the EU is bluffing. There is a solution to this mess, said Anne McElvoy in the Evening Standard. An idea that May once floated is back in play: keeping Northern Ireland in the EU customs union and effectively creating a regulatory border in the Irish Sea, rather than on the island of Ireland. Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, an ally of the ruling Conservative Party, will shriek because they don’t want Northern Ireland to be treated differently from the rest of the U.K. Yet “in the game of dwindling outcomes, something has to give.”
The big question is whether Johnson can get the House of Commons to sign off on such a deal, said Peter Foster in The Daily Telegraph. The Conservatives recently lost their majority in the chamber—a consequence of Boris’ decision to boot pro-Remain lawmakers from his party—and Johnson will need to win over members of the opposition center-left Labour Party. But Labour “has no interest in a super-hard Brexit,” which economists warn will “see businesses forced to suppress wages to remain competitive as tariff and regulatory trade barriers are erected” between the EU and England, Wales, and Scotland. With six weeks to go, the “Brexit circle remains a long way from being squared.”