Thread by @Usherwood

Some thoughts on negotiation by distraction:

Often in political negotiation, you find this happening. A bunch of anger about X, while trying to sort out the substantively more important issue of Y

X is more often about procedure - how people negotiate - than substance - what they negotiate about.

Hence outrage at words uttered, tweets sent, analogies made, suggestions of backsliding

The rarer version is getting people worked up about a relatively trivial substantive point, which you know the other lot can 'concede' down the line at little or no cost

(I'm thinking blue passports right now, but you'll have your own example)

Of course, if you're trying this properly, then you make your distraction not totally divorced from the substance.

However, you can frame it in a way that you can a ruckus about wording that cuts across that substance in a way that leaves open ways out

In short, you're trying distract from the substantive compromises you think you might be making, so that there's less pressure (usually back home) limiting you making these compromises

The danger lies in how you go about this

Most obviously, you might frame your distraction in a way that it ends up blocking a potentially useful way forward in the negotiation, because you didn't plan carefully enough

Blue passports is good on this, because how it plays out, it was never a legal requirement to have the burgundy ones, so EU can't oblige the UK on this. Plus, it's something material, and how most of the public will engage with 'freedom of mvt'

A less good example is Chequers, because while it's not really about the immediate Withdrawal Agt, enough people think it is about that, so that's making getting a WA through Parliament harder

The second danger is that your distraction becomes the dominant issue

Blue passports is never going to be this, partly because it's a small thing, partly because we had the bulk of the media interest a while ago, when people realised that these new passports might not be made in the UK

Chequers is on the edge, for the reasons mentioned above. In narrow terms, it's hindering the Political Declaration that'll sit alongside the WA, and EU push-back on it is forcing May to talking tougher on the rest of it all

Hunt's EU/USSR line is another poor example. It might have been for local effect (to bolster standing in CONs), but it's now blown right back, with strong responses from across the EU, including several would-be allies

All of this highlights another key part of negotiating by distraction.

You have to keep negotiating, while you're distracting

Salzburg underlined this very well.

Fine to do the 'tough talk' thing, but you also have to come with some evidence of substantive engagement with negotiations.

If you don't, then you're just talking tough

Basic lines to remember in all this?

- Assume those you negotiate with know when you're running a distraction
- Never buy your own BS and always remember what you're trying to achieve