Theresa May has only herself to blame for the difficulties she finds herself in. This article HERE by Jonathan Freeland is a terrific summary of why she has made such a terrible mess of Brexit. She was given a lot of wise advice, including that from the former UK representative to the EU (UKREP) Sir Ivan Rogers not to trigger Article 50 until she had a plan. But she ignored it and much more wisdom besides, preferring instead to go with the most extreme Brexit nutters and reject the single market and the customs union.
In the article he links to some remarks made on Twitter by David Allen Green, a legal blogger about how May and other ministers communicate proposals as broad visions (or vague aspirations if you're Guy Verhofstadt) while the EU set out detailed positions logically following the red lines we ourselves have set. And the red lines lead inevitably to a Canada style FTA and nothing more. No doubt there will be growing anger on the Brexiteer side about EU intransigence but we can hardly complain when the rules we helped to make are used against us.
We are looking increasingly silly asking for things that we would have rejected if any other third country asked for them.
As plenty of others have pointed out the EU is a legal construct, not a super state or even just a state, and it is this attention to legal detail that is allowing them to run rings round us.
Freeland points out we could have produced our own legal text draft but chose not to, probably because we couldn't reach agreement among the cabinet. BoJo is OK writing a newspaper column where he can engage his penchant for long words and erudite flummery but as that other prime minster used to say, the devil is in the detail. And the EU are very good at it. You can be sure the legal text they prepared will be adopted with few changes. If BoJo tried it would be amusing but wouldn't last five minutes.
The great problem on our side is that we don't do detail any more. Ministers don't even read the details let alone write any. And understanding the details is well beyond all of them. We are just short of twelve months on from triggering Article 50 and May's speech showed that she is only just getting to grips with the detail. The bit about most rules coming from other global bodies seems to have come as a revelation for example.
Christopher Booker in his Telegraph column (HERE) says the EU have listened to these big set piece speeches over the months and have quietly responded by explaining EU law but it made no difference and we continued to make speeches demanding things they keep telling us we cannot have.
I understand from Peter Foster's piece in The Telegraph today that Norway and Switzerland are watching what happens on Brexit to see if we get any special access and are ready to demand the same. The EU know this and it doesn't matter in the end how much support David Davis drums up on his tour of EU capitals, in the end it will be the legal details and avoiding having to make more concessions to other countries by granting the UK a "deep and special partnership" together with our red lines that will determine our fate.
