Theresa May’s letter to Donald Tusk contained language which has been interpreted as blackmailing the EU to withdraw cooperation on security if we don’t get a deal on trade. She should clarify immediately she doesn’t intend to do anything so foolish.
The relevant passage of the prime minister’s letter doesn’t make a direct threat. But it is unfortunately ambiguous enough that it could be read that way. After saying that she wants a “deep and special partnership that takes in both economic and security cooperation”, she goes on to write:
“If, however, we leave the European Union without an agreement the default position is that we would have to trade on World Trade Organisation terms. In security terms a failure to reach agreement would mean our cooperation in the fight against crime and terrorism would be weakened.”
The Times’ front-page headline reacting to this passage was “May threat to EU terror pact”. The Sun interpreted it as “your money or your lives”.
Amber Rudd denied categorically on Sky News yesterday that there was any threat. The home secretary said there were two separate pillars of the negotiation – the economy and security. She added that, although the consequences of failing to reach a deal were mentioned in the same paragraph of May’s letter, they were in separate sentences.
Rudd said it was important to negotiate a series of arrangements with the EU so we could continue to cooperate with it in the fight against terrorism and crime. She gave Europol as an example. Others mentioned in the government’s Brexit white paper are the European Arrest Warrant, the Schengen Information System, the EU Passenger Names Records rules and the European Criminal Records Information System.
The home secretary made clear the government wants a deal to keep our country and other EU states safe that will be different from the current arrangements but “have the same sort of benefits.” Although cooperation will be harder once we’ve left Europe’s top table, there’s clearly a strong mutual interest in working as closely together as possible.
But despite Rudd’s attempts to squish the notion that we are threatening the EU, that impression is still lingering. For example, Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator, told Sky News today: “I find the letter of Mrs May very constructive, generally, but there is also one threat in it, in saying ‘look, we want also to co-operate with you on security issues in our common fight against terrorism but you have to give us a good deal on trade and economy’.”
It is therefore important that the prime minister herself takes to airwaves and denies that she is threatening to shoot ourselves and the EU in the head if she doesn’t get what she wants on trade.
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Edited by Luke Lythgoe
So desperate and foolish are May and her equally unpleasant cohorts, that they will attempt to use anything at all in an effort to make some sort of cobbled together deal as some sort of “victory.”