Yesterday, we also learned there were “no plans” to take Britain back into the EU’s Erasmus+ scheme — dashing the hopes of young people wanting to study abroad.
There is a 2017 'back to the future' feel to the whole thing. I seemed to recall David Davis thinking he could negotiate substantial stuff with Mrs Merkel in Germany and somehow bypass any awkwardness with Brussels as if the EU was superfluous. Starmer appears to think he is just a better cherry-picker than Cameron, May, Davis, Frost, and Johnson. I fear a rude awakening is not far away.
An article in The Times says it all:
"A source said that while all aspects of the [Trade and Cooperation] agreement were subject to negotiation, officials would be trying to secure preferential access for British businesses to the German market."
Preferential access indeed!!
The piece then says: "There will also be questions about how comfortable Brussels would be with Germany striking a direct agreement with Britain, given its membership of the single market. One EU source said: “It is good to see Starmer in the European capitals but he must, as I am sure he does, realise that any access to the EU’s single market comes with obligations on mobility and alignment with European laws, on food safety for example.”
Quite.
The German chancellor must have been baffled by Starmer's trip. He is up for re-election next year and is so far behind the CDU that nobody expects him to be in power in the next 12 months. The CDU’s leader Friedrich Merz is expected to replace Scholz and he is preferred as Germany’s next chancellor by 64% of voters in recent polling.
So, Scholz is irrelevant, anything he might be able to agree to will be inside the TCA not additional to it and it won't have any real impact on the UK in any case. It's a total waste of time.
The Guardian is sceptical. Jennifer Rankin has her feet firmly on the ground with a sober article explaining that promises to tear down “unnecessary barriers to trade” by negotiating a veterinary agreement with the EU, improving access for touring artists to the continent and striking mutual recognition agreements for professionals amount to little more than “tinkering around the edges of the relationship.” She was quoting from a report by the thinktank UK in a Changing Europe (UKice).
And this assumes Starmer is successful. UKice don't say what failure looks like. Rankin goes on:
"Talk of bespoke deals raises the ghosts that haunted the Brexit negotiations, namely the UK taking the benefits of the single market free from the EU’s common rules, enforcement or budget payments. 'People will soon rediscover there is a reason why there were red lines,' a senior EU official told the Guardian. 'What we don’t want is to have the single market cut in pieces. The UK – they are very good negotiators and they always want to cherrypick'.”
On Youth mobility, the FT claims a UK government official has said Britain wanted to bolster educational and cultural exchanges, such as children on school trips and musicians on tour, by removing red tape, but insisted it would not amount to the scale of movement, or duration of stays, that are typically agreed for youth mobility schemes and that have been floated by some figures in the EU.
Last week Downing Street said Britain was “not considering” an EU-wide youth mobility scheme, which the FT says was frustrating campaigners pushing for a return to pre-Brexit freedoms.
We had many opt-outs as a member, we want bespoke deals to allow preferential access to the German market, some sort of defence and security pact and now a special youth mobility scheme unlike any other.
I am sure in Brussels they will be asking themselves where this search for Britain's perfect EU relationship will end or if we will ever get there.
The sorry truth is that we are now into an endless series of negotiations, always behind the curve, always seeking to limit the damage caused by Brexit, always with the begging bowl outstretched and always trying to cherry-pick the single market.
As a member, the EU Commission would go out of its way, and stretch every diplomatic sinew to accommodate the UK's often unique fears and fetishes and, being a significant contributor, we would more often than not succeed in getting legislation changed to help us or win important opt-outs. Now we can only tap on the windows from the outside.
I am starting to think we are all going around in ever-decreasing circles.
