Donald Tusk was in Dublin yesterday for a meeting with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and in the press conference afterwards had an uncompromising message for Downing Street. Come up with a workable solution or the talks cannot progress. The Independent HERE says he threatened to freeze the talks but I don't think he went quite that far.
What he did do was issue a challenge. He was saying: you don't want a hard border in Ireland or across the Irish Sea and you don't want to be in the customs union or the single market. So, square that circle.
If anyone in London thought the issue could keep being kicked further down the road they are going to be disappointed. The Irish border problem has to be solved first he went on, “As long as the UK doesn’t present such a solution, it is very difficult to imagine substantive progress in Brexit negotiations".
It seems to me the EU are getting sick of the UK side rejecting solutions but refusing to suggest any of their own. The media don't seem to have picked this up but the Irish Times HERE give it front page coverage.
Tusk also said the idea put forward by chancellor Philip Hammond, suggesting a free trade deal between the EU and Britain could include financial services, even if the UK remains outside the European single market and customs union. Tusk said a free trade agreement can cover trade in goods, but this would not apply to services which was about common rules, supervision and enforcement. It means that in terms of financial services “life will be different after Brexit”.
And he added this, addressed to the chancellor but it could have been aimed at all the Brexiteers:
“I also heard the Chancellor’s words about financial services being ‘very much in the mutual interest’ of the UK and EU. I fully respect the Chancellor’s competence in defining what’s in the UK’s interest. I would, however, ask to allow us to define what’s in the EU’s interest.”
When the Brexiteers and particularly Davis and May understand this we will be in a better position to be realistic about the bleak future ahead of us.
Mrs May has played a bad hand about as badly as anyone could have imagined. Alternating between threat, bluster and what is seen as insincere sweet talk, using up precious negotiating time, refusing to recognise the problems and generally stonewalling as if we're the dominant partner. The EU probably saw some of this coming but I don't think even they expected us to behave so irresponsibly and invoke Article 50 without a plan armed only with wishful thinking and fantasy.
The clock is ticking down quickly and we have done no preparation so we couldn't exit without a deal and avoid massive damage to our own economy. It was pretty unthinkable in March 2017, now it would be a calamity on top of a catastrophe in an unfolding disaster. Nemesis and humiliation awaits us.
