The Brexit negotiationsBritain’s diplomatic delusions

As the deadline for a deal looms, Britain’s bargaining power weakens

Print edition | Britain

Aug 23rd 2018

LESS than two months are left until the October European Union summit that was meant to agree a Brexit deal. Yet
the gap between the two sides remains wide. Theresa May proposed her Chequers plan for future relations only seven
weeks ago. That made it wise for Dominic Raab, the Brexit secretary, and Michel Barnier, the European
Commission’s Brexit pointman, to agree in Brussels this week to continuous negotiations. It follows a flurry of
diplomacy by Mrs May and her foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, aimed at averting too firm an EU rejection of the
Chequers plan.

A big problem is that Mrs May and her ministers overestimate their negotiating strength. They have been egged on in
this by Brexiteers ever since Michael Gove, now environment secretary, claimed in 2016 that, after a Brexit vote,
Britain would “hold all the cards”. A glance at the negotiations suggests this was wrong. Britain has slowly but
steadily ceded ground to the EU, not the other way round. Three current examples paint a similar picture.

The first concerns growing talk of a no-deal Brexit. Contingency plans from the EU and, this week, from the
government confirm how disruptive this would be. They also show Britain suffering the most. Warnings keep
mounting against a no-deal exit, from lorry-drivers, NHS trusts, power-suppliers in Northern Ireland and many others.
Mr Hunt was right to call the idea a mistake that would be regretted for generations. Yet after criticism he recanted a
day later, claiming to have meant that Britain would prosper, but Europe suffer.

This leads to the second diplomatic blunder, using the threat of no deal as a bargaining tool. It is true that neither side
wants such a result. Yet Brussels knows it would be far worse for Britain than for the EU. Moreover, European
diplomats think the real target of no-deal talk by Mrs May’s ministers is domestic. The government needs to shore up
rocky support at home for the Chequers plan by displaying the gory horrors of a no-deal alternative.

The third, related, example is repeated attacks on Brussels for an ideological intransigence that pushes towards a no-
deal Brexit. Ministers like the tactic of getting around Mr Barnier and his team by negotiating directly with more
pragmatic national governments. The notion that any problem London has with the EU can be solved by appealing to
Berlin (and Paris) dies hard among British politicians, although it has seldom worked.

It also misses two other key points. Mr Barnier is operating under negotiating guidelines set by national governments,
which he has consulted and kept closely informed throughout the process. And on the EU side he is the person with
the most to lose if all goes wrong. A failed negotiation that led to a no-deal Brexit would badly damage Mr Barnier,
who harbours hopes of being the next president of the European Commission. That should make him the ally of the
British, not their enemy, in finding a mutually acceptable deal.

This does not mean there is no point talking to other heads of government, as Mrs May will do at an informal summit
in Salzburg next month. Indeed, if Chequers is to have any chance, she must persuade them to soften Mr Barnier’s
guidelines. It is also true that some countries are more inclined to be kind to Britain than others. But her problem is
that the two hardest-liners are France and Germany.

The best way to soften them may be to stress the case for close co-operation in non-economic areas such as domestic
security and defence. It is surely not to wave around no-deal threats, attack the European Commission and insist
loudly on the indelibility of Britain’s red lines.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline"Diplomatic delusions"
Print edition | Britain
Aug 23rd 2018

BagehotTheresa May edges back from the brink

At last, things may be turning in the prime minister’s favour

Print edition | Britain

Sep 22nd 2018
THERESA MAY is about to enter the most challenging period of a prime ministership that has already been
extraordinarily testing. She has to forge a deal with a European Union that senses her weakness. She has to confront a
Conservative Party conference that smells betrayal. Trickiest of all, she has to get her Brexit deal through a fractious
House of Commons. And she has to do all this knowing that the price of failure could be political turmoil, economic
catastrophe and a place in the history books alongside Britain’s worst prime ministers.
What are the chances of her succeeding? It is impossible to make firm predictions in such fractious circumstances. Yet
there are signs that politics is at last moving in the prime minister’s direction. Mrs May has often been cursed by
dismal luck. Who can forget her excruciating performance at last year’s party conference, when she was seized by a
coughing fit and the backdrop of the stage collapsed behind her? But just when she needs it, her luck has changed. The
EU is sounding friendlier as the Brexit negotiations near their conclusion. A political meltdown in Britain would have
severe repercussions on both sides of the Channel. And her fractious party is showing signs that it might fall in line.
Mrs May is lucky in her internal opposition. The leader of the campaign to unseat her, Boris Johnson, is widely
regarded by his fellow Conservative MPs as a rogue and a risk. The fact that, at the same time, he is so popular with
the Tory grassroots provides her with her most powerful whipping device: support me or you might end up with this
disaster-in-waiting. The Brexiteer faction as a whole contains a large number of what might politely be called
eccentrics. The credibility, such as it is, of the European Research Group (ERG), a caucus of hardline Brexiteer MPs,
recently took a dive when it failed to produce its own Brexit plan. Mrs May has also been lucky in a changing of the
guard at the Daily Mail, Britain’s most important tabloid newspaper, where Paul Dacre, a fierce Brexiteer, has been
replaced by Geordie Greig, an ardent remainer. The Mail wasted no time in making fun of the fact that the ERG’s
abortive Brexit document included plans to equip Britain with a nuclear-missile shield.
Mrs May is also fortunate in her opposition across the parliamentary aisle. The Tory party is far more worried about
Jeremy Corbyn than it was when he won Labour’s leadership election three years ago. Not only has he failed to soften
his far-left position on domestic policy, he has also undermined the government’s position on the murder of two
British citizens by Russian intelligence operatives. All but the most fanatical Brexiteers would fall in line if they
thought that failing to do so might hand Britain over to a man who has spent his life protesting against “Western
imperialism” and campaigning for more trade-union power. Mr Corbyn has also failed to produce a plausible Brexit
policy of his own. Six months before Britain leaves the EU, Labour’s policy consists of little more than having its
cake and eating it (somehow maintaining the benefits of the single market while also forging its own rules) and
meaningless platitudes (“a pro-employment Brexit”).
This autumn may play to Mrs May’s political strengths. Britain has become so familiar with her weaknesses over the
past year or so—her lack of human empathy, her habit of repeating the same monotonous phrase (“strong and stable”,
“nothing has changed”), her combination of stubbornness and weakness—that it is easy to forget that she has
formidable qualities. The first is her sheer relentlessness. Mrs May lacks the political gifts of natural politicians such
as David Cameron and Tony Blair. She suffers from type one diabetes, which means she has to inject herself with
insulin several times a day. But she has made it to the top regardless. Her almost freakish focus on getting the job done
was illustrated during a press conference in a basement in Ramsgate, Kent, in the run-up to the general election of
2015. The lights blew out, plunging the room into darkness, but the Maybot continued regardless, taking questions on
arcane bits of policy.
Her second strength is her sense of duty. Mrs May is an anti-populist politician who found herself prime minister at a
populist moment. She is a grammar-school girl who made it into the cabinet by dint of hard work and common sense.
By an odd chance she was put into the top job by a referendum that was driven by populist rage against the
establishment. The dutiful Mrs May set herself three tasks: obeying the “will of the people”, as expressed in the
referendum; leaving the EU without damaging Britain’s economy; and doing all this without splitting her party.
Against the odds
She faces an excruciating task. For her to succeed, a lot of things have to go right. For her to fail, just one has to go
wrong. She has to produce a deal that satisfies both Brussels and the bulk of the Brexiteers. She has to forge a majority
by keeping her party in line or winning over enough wavering Labour MPs to make up for the Tory rebels. There is
every chance that her government will be consumed by paralysis—that her compromise doesn’t get through and that
she has nothing to replace it. This could produce any number of outcomes: a putsch in the Conservative Party, with
Mrs May replaced by a rival; a general election, with Mr Corbyn likely to get into Downing Street; or a second
referendum, which could even mean Brexit was reversed.
David Cameron and his acolytes always looked down on Mrs May as a dutiful dullard who got a second-class degree
in geography from St Hugh’s and then went on to rise without a trace. But dutiful dullards frequently end up better
regarded than talented chancers. Mrs May is trying her best to clear up the terrible mess that the Bullingdon boy left
for her. And if her luck holds, and she succeeds in pushing a workable compromise through Parliament, she will
deserve thanks as well as admiration. There is honour, if not glory, in making the best of a bad job.
Correction (September 26th 2018): Mrs May attended St Hugh’s College, Oxford—not St Hilda’s as we originally
wrote. Sorry.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "Back from the brink"
Print edition | Britain/ Sep 22nd 2018