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Today’s take on the Johnson government’s approach to negotiating Brexit and what it means. Recent events basically leave three solutions 1) the government is focusing on elections OR 2) it is shooting for no deal and blaming the EU OR 3) it is incompetent. Why? Thread
If you look back the UK and the EU have reached an agreement (the WA), but that agreement could not pass parliament. Now the UK government predicted that when there was a NI-only backstop. It insisted on an all UK backstop saying only then could the deal pass.
Whatever you think about that - it is also clear that the EU did not want to do that. In fact it feared the UK would use NI to obtain an all UK approach. But it gave in to make the deal pass.
It didn’t. This causes a big negotiating problem: the EU now has doubts a UK government can seal the deal. Negotiators will be at pains to go back to their principals (here the Council) and ask for changes to their mandates if they are uncertain that this would actually help.
Why change your negotiating stance and cross your red lines if it doesn’t get you a deal, after all? So if this government really wanted a deal, one of the main things would be: give the EU dead certainty that a time-limit to the backstop would pass the deal.
What has happened instead? There have been demands to add a time limit or unilateral exit. The PM, however, demanded dropping the backstop. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
The Foreign Secretary said that this would not be enough.
Yup @kevinhorourke ‘s tweet should read “to avoid a no deal”. In case you wondered. In short: the difficult and rejected limit to the backstop that was the original goal of the ERG even turned to “no backstop” for the PM and “we want yet more” for the Foreign Secretary.
@kevinhorourke If doing what you said you wouldn’t do is not enough for the PM, but the demands of the PM are not enough for the Foreign Secretary, what’s the conclusion for negotiators? If you give in, nobody can assure you this would pass through Parliament. So don’t give in.
@kevinhorourke Which leads us to the conclusions: either the government is messaging inconsistently because they lack experience and competence. But they have all held high offices before and have emphasised running a tight ship. So?
@kevinhorourke So possibility two: they are shooting for a no deal and are consciously making sure that the EU cannot give in. And then they’ll blame the EU.
@kevinhorourke OR possibility three: they want to appear the toughest of the tough to the electorate for the next GE. Repair the Tory party. Destroy the Brexit party. And then turn around and do other things.
@kevinhorourke BUT caveat: October 31 is around the corner. If your goal is to negotiate a whole deal BY THEN, from scratch and get it to Parliament - that is dream territory. It took a long time to negotiate the last one.
