It's easy (especially on Twitter 🙈) to criticise the Government's Brexit dither or to discuss the shifting taxonomy of Tory Brexit tribes. Much of that is fair enough. But we shouldn't skip over the absurd negotiating stances of the European Commission. Quick thread 👇
2) At moment, Michel Barnier’s team has put just one actual offer on the table for the UK post-Brexit. We can have a free trade deal. But there’s a bitter coda. It would only apply to Great Britain
3) That would mean Northern Ireland would have different rules & regulations set by the EU. It would no longer be part of the UK’s internal market. Its trade policy would fall under the control of Brussels.
4) Even if you don’t see this as an attempted “annexation” by the EU of a UK province, it’s clearly Brussels interfering with the internal constitutional arrangements of a state.
5) The UK accepted the EU’s decision to sequence the Brexit talks. This meant we had to make “sufficient progress” — on money, rights of EU citizens in the UK and British citizens in the EU, and the Irish border — before talking trade and the future.
6) Nowhere was this sequencing required in EU law. It was a political decision of the commission. Instead of discussing the future and exit in parallel, months slipped away.
7) Although the commission agreed that the UK had made “sufficient progress” back in December, it’s still not properly discussing the post-Brexit future UK-EU relationship. Now the UK is trapped in a Kafkaesque loop of the commission’s own design.
8) We can’t move on in the talks without agreeing a fail-safe (backstop) for the Irish border, but we aren’t allowed to resolve the Irish border by referring to our overall future relationship with the EU. This is absurd.
9) I’m in favour of keeping the Irish border as open as possible. So is the government. But while the European Commission rejects any border with Ireland, its policy threatens a new one across the Irish Sea, within the UK itself.
10) And it’s not just on Northern Ireland....the Commission’s approach on a range of issues from security co-operation, to the rights of British citizens in the EU, to medical cooperation, to the Galileo system is lamentable.
11) Overall Brussels is attempting to push UK towards a situation where the only real option would leave us closer to EU than Norway is, without even ability to control our trade policy. But given the UK's political culture , that’s a risk. No deal is looking ever more likely.
12/12) The EU’s failure to be flexible, creative, and responsive is raising the stakes. Key member states need to engage urgently. Otherwise we risk seeing UK-EU relations soured for decades to come thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/p…
