Boris Johnson has closed off every avenue to opening talks with the EU, except on terms he knows our European friends can’t accept. Yet he and his ministers try to blame the EU for the stalemate. He’s wrong to think he can bully the EU into blinking.
A new analysis shows that the prime minister is the sole author of his gamble on a no deal Brexit. The Senior European Experts group’s latest paper is the most thorough analysis so far of the scope for re-opening the Withdrawal Treaty. It is no surprise that it finds little or no scope to do so. But its relentless slaying of one Brexiter unicorn after another reveals the emptiness of Johnson’s approach and explains the EU’s tough position.
Put simply, there is no need for the EU to retreat on the “backstop” designed to ensure that the Irish border remains open because all the alternatives postulated by Brexiters don’t work. Much effort has been devoted to arriving at some mysterious technological solution that would obviate the need for controls on the 300 mile border. But like alchemists trying to make gold in centuries past, all they have come up with is a worthless grey sludge.
This isn’t because the Irish Government is being uncooperative but because whether it is EU rules or those of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), there’s no getting around the need for some controls around the border after Brexit. That’s what happens if you rip Northern Ireland out of the single market and the customs union against the wishes of its people. Which is why Theresa May agreed to the backstop in the first place.
There’s another crucial fact when explaining the EU’s position. Just as it is the legal default in the UK that it will leave on October 31 if nothing is done, it is the legal position of the EU that the Withdrawal Treaty cannot be reopened. That was the unanimous decision of the European Council in March. To override it, they would need another decision, which the Irish government could veto.
But there’s politics as well as law at work here too. The EU does not want to take responsibility for the potentially disastrous consequences of the UK crashing out but equally it is determined not to reward the Brexit vote. If the UK could get the kind of deal the Brexiters promised in 2016 (all the benefits of EU membership but without free movement of people and at no financial cost), that would undermine the EU’s very foundations.
With Johnson demanding the withdrawal of the backstop and the EU unprepared to do that, there is no room for negotiation. As the Commission’s spokesperson eloquently put it on Monday: “For a negotiation to be successful it takes two to tango. If the music and the rhythm is not right then … you have no dance”.
The fact that it took our prime minister nearly a week after taking office to speak to the Taoiseach and the only EU leader he has met so far is the Estonian prime minister (who happened to be in London on holiday) shows that the government is not serious about trying to reopen the negotiations.
Johnson is now stuck with his all-or-nothing no deal policy. For him to win, he will have to survive parliamentary attempts to stop him and the reality of crashing out of the EU will have to be better than almost anyone other than kamikaze Brexiters thinks it will be. That’s high stakes gambling alright but it is our lives and our money at risk.