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EU leaders pretty convinced they will soon by faced with Boris Johnson as new UK PM and opinion is split /1
Talk to different EU diplomats and politicians from different EU countries and you’ll get a number of different opinions as to how #Brexit will play out in the autumn /2
Some see BJ as one of the key architects of the Leave vote and therefore one of the few UK politicians able to sell a compromise deal with the EU to Parliament /3
Others in EU think BJ is talking tough ahead of being (or hoping to be) crowned PM - for benefit of Tory party members and to keep the Brexit Party at bay but that he is actually hoping that Parliament will vote to stop no deal ahead of 31 Oct /4
EU champions of this theory reckon that BJ (or Hunt in the world of if’s) have fought so hard and wanted so long to become PM, that they would be loathe to imperil their premiership with a no deal #Brexit after such a short time in office /5
Meaning most in EU are listening with one ear only to what PM candidates are saying. One high level EU figure said to me: “We’re politicians too. We know the need for rhetoric on the campaign trail.” Many Europeans hope the new PM will be more ‘sensible’ once in office/6
There are even quite a few EU ‘no deal optimists’ to be found. They reckon shock of no deal will be so severe the UK will ‘crawl’ back to EU asking for negotiations to restart. At which point EU would insist on talking #Brexit bill, citizens rights and Irish border issue first/7
I think this is a miscalculation. Another one. On both sides: The EU misreading the probable UK reax in no deal scenario as BJ misreads the EU- imagining that talking up no deal will scare the EU into dumping the backstop, abandoning Ireland + exposing their own single market/8
EU absolutely prefers to avoid no deal but not at any cost. Possibility of accidental no deal #Brexit in high stakes autumn bc of both sides misreading each other are high /9
