This report in The Guardian HERE claims a top EU official, following this week's round of scheduled talks, is warning that the UK is "chasing a fantasy," as if we didn't know. But the anonymous diplomat said several things that get to the heart of the Brexiteers fantasy that he thinks we're chasing. He says he is a "bit concerned because the pre-condition for fruitful discussions has to be that the UK accepts the consequences of its own choices".
I think this is absolutely true, we have not accepted the "consequences" that Barnier has been warning about for at least a year.
But there are in fact not one, but two fantasies. Leavers do not accept the consequences will be negative and think they will be largely beneficial. They don't believe any of the experts who say Brexit will cut trade and security, making us poorer and less safe. This is their fantasy.
Meanwhile, remainers, particularly the PM and Chancellor, and senior civil servants in Whitehall, know what the consequences are and how badly we will be impacted, but can't accept them. They think we can somehow mitigate the worst by negotiating a status more or less the same as we have at present as a member. This is the remainer fantasy.
So, each side is pursuing a fantasy, but it isn't the same one. One can see how the negotiations are locked in stasis on the UK side because of this.
Yesterday the UK government also released a "Technical note" (HERE), which I think was tabled in Brussels this week, about the Galileo satellite programme. In it the government has now taken to mixing threats with pleading for Britain to be allowed to continue with Galileo. After the EU indicated we wouldn't have the same involvement as before, it's obvious that the threats to start building own system didn't work so we are now trying more persuasion and still keeping the option open to have a UK system of our own. If excluded we also want our money back. I think this demonstrates the position we are in and will increasingly be in as Brexit slowly humiliates us.
The EU diplomat - not very diplomatically - said, "The EU doesn’t negotiate under threat. Such a request for reimbursement would be backsliding and unacceptable".
Politico (HERE) report the official saying, "I have the impression the U.K. thinks everything has to change on the EU side, so that everything remains the same on the U.K. side," adding that London’s demands violated the “legal requirements” agreed by member countries (including Britain) when Galileo was set up.
And bizarrely, according to Ivan Rogers speech on Sunday, we actually tried to stop the whole thing originally:
"For those of us who worked on the intensive debate over the creation of Galileo about 18 years ago, and recall a previous generation of UK politicians instructing one to find ways to ensure it did not get off the ground – I failed – listening to a much more Eurosceptic set of politicians complain bitterly that, post Brexit, the field might be somehow tilted more against the depth of participation we now are enthusiasts for, brings me back to my collective amnesia point".
As a member, and one of the larger ones too, we had a lot of rights and influence. With Galileo we now have to plead from the sidelines like beggars after a few scraps.
All of this heaps pressure on the PM. I assume if there is no withdrawal agreement, there will be no UK involvement in Galileo for sure and probably we will have little anyway when we are a third country.
And of the whole briefing this surely makes the most telling point:
Asked whether shutting the U.K. out of security-related matters is a sign of distrust, the official responded: “That is not the issue. The EU is a rules-based system … Why is that? Because 28 member states do not trust each other spontaneously … They trust each other because there are remedies available. You don’t trust each other when there are no remedies.”
The official warned that the U.K. having access to sensitive information flowing through Galileo could threaten the EU’s autonomy, “or to use a term dear to the U.K., it will breach the sovereignty of the EU.”
