Liam 'swivel eyes' Fox is now complaining that the EU is trying to 'blackmail' us into paying our financial settlement (HERE). This is the bill we have already admitted we owe - we just won't say what we think the amount is. Far from blackmailing us, the EU just want to see our method of calculating it. But as expected the right wing newspapers are full of predictable outrage this morning after the closing of the third negotiating round yesterday.
Divorces are usually acrimonious and I suppose it was too much to expect that our withdrawal from the EU could be handled smoothly and easily without a lot of ill feeling on both sides. However, I don't believe the government has handled Brexit at all well. Putting Brexiteers in charge was thought of as a good idea at the time and perhaps it was unavoidable, but when we look back it will be seen by leave voters as the first big mistake.
Brexiteers are viscerally opposed to the EU, they cheered every insult that Farage hurled in Brussels and see no good in the Commission or indeed in most of the central aims that the EU was founded to achieve. Because of this the negotiations have got off to a poor start and will only get worse. There is no trust and from the beginning Davis has talked about the whole exercise as if it was an adversarial contest somewhere between a tense, high stakes poker game and all-out guerilla warfare. He talks about not revealing our hand and using constructive ambiguity to deceive the other side, about no deal being better than a bad one.
At some points, just after the vote, there was talk of Brexit being a win-win situation for the UK and the EU but since then, in almost every utterance, the PM and anti-EU ministers have spoken as if there are only winners and losers. As if it's a zero sum game.
There is no trust as Michel Barnier said yesterday at the press conference. No negotiations can be successful without trust. There may be an outcome, but if it also results in a lot of ill feeling there will be no winners. Accusations of blackmail are not going to help, but being realistic I don't think the Brexiteers can help themselves and at the end of the negotiations relations are going to be absolutely icy.
The Sky News report (HERE), says until the UK put some maths on the table showing how they think the bill should be calculated it's hard to see how the talks can move forward. I agree with this, in fact it's so blindingly obvious one has to question what it is that's stopping us. The EU have been asking for a position paper on the UK's thinking on what we owe - and we've already conceded we owe something. We just steadfastly refused to say what we think it is, simply saying it isn't what the EU calculate.
So, what might be stopping us? It can only be the political backlash. A vociferous minority of the Conservative party thinks we owe nothing and would happily walk away. Many leave voters and the right wing press will be furious to learn we might be prepared to pay a few billion, after all they voted to save money not pay more! Given this, one might sympathise with the government but they have only themselves to blame. Johnson, Gove, Davis and others convinced many that we would be better off and are struggling to find a way to explain that Brexit is going to be costly.
We are only discussing the first three principal issues and have made little or no progress after five months. We know what is preventing progress but stupidly refuse to make the leap, although we probably know we will have to do it at some point. This is madness. In a year we will look back at these lost five months and rue the wasted time as the deadline rushes up with no agreement in sight.
Even on the other issues we have offered a few options. The dispute resolution paper is really a sort of history primer on dispute resolution mechanisms used elsewhere and says the ones included in the paper are only for "illustrative purposes". But we have not said which one we prefer and have even said it might not be any of them but something entirely different! No wonder Barnier is tearing his hair out.
Guy Verhofstadt, Chief negotiator for the European parliament hit the nail on the head with this article (HERE) in The Telegraph. He says the EU has bent over backwards to accommodate the UK for years - and this is true - but now as a thanks for all that we vote to leave and demand more 'flexibility'. It is shaming that this is how we are being seen in Europe.
And finally, in Trinity-Mirror news (HERE) - 'the most scathing verdict on Fox’s comments came from the former Treasury boss Nick Macpherson who tweeted that “blackmail” is the “perpetual cry of the smaller negotiator with the weaker hand. #getagrip.”Let’s not forget that in July, Dr Fox said the Brexit negotiations should be the “easiest in history.”
Mr Fox may also want to explain why, if he is such a champion of free trade, he campaigned to leave the world’s largest and most successful free trade association.'
Guy Verhofstadt, Chief negotiator for the European parliament hit the nail on the head with this article (HERE) in The Telegraph. He says the EU has bent over backwards to accommodate the UK for years - and this is true - but now as a thanks for all that we vote to leave and demand more 'flexibility'. It is shaming that this is how we are being seen in Europe.
And finally, in Trinity-Mirror news (HERE) - 'the most scathing verdict on Fox’s comments came from the former Treasury boss Nick Macpherson who tweeted that “blackmail” is the “perpetual cry of the smaller negotiator with the weaker hand. #getagrip.”Let’s not forget that in July, Dr Fox said the Brexit negotiations should be the “easiest in history.”
Mr Fox may also want to explain why, if he is such a champion of free trade, he campaigned to leave the world’s largest and most successful free trade association.'
