Just when you think we can't sink any lower in international esteem, along comes our new Foreign Secretary to prove you wrong. Jeremy Hunt has been in Germany, trying to drive a wedge between the EU 27 and warning of an "accidental" no deal exit (HERE). He is really threatening the UK will damage itself catastrophically unless the EU begins to dismantle its own institutions. He seems to have been humoured by his counterpart, Heiko Maas, saying Germany did not want a disorderly Brexit: “We want an agreement. And we also know that for that we have to make steps toward each other,” but adding that the EU’s collective interests had to be defended.
In a moment of utter pathos Hunt asked (HERE) for Germany's help in avoiding a generational "fissure" that would sour relations between the UK and the EU for a generation. This is from a country that has just rejected EU membership and where Hunt's predecessor has spent almost his entire adult life attacking the EU and even accused it of administering "punishment beatings"!
“Without a real change in approach from the EU negotiators … we do now face a real risk of a Brexit no deal by accident,”
It can hardly be "by accident" can it? For one side to threaten the other with walking away is a deliberate act. He said,
“Many people in the EU are thinking they just need to wait long enough and the U.K. will blink. That’s not going to happen,”
Oh, but it will happen. We have far more to lose than Germany or the EU. The EU know that we are going to blink, and blink again.
While Hunt is in Germany, Theresa May is travelling to Austria and Slovakia in a continuing effort at the same failed David Davis policy as Hunt. That of trying to divide and rule as we did in the nineteenth century. We have this strange idea that on the one hand we gave up our sovereignty to the superstate that is the EU, but at the same time we crawl around the EU 27 as if they're independent sovereign nations that have the freedom to do whatever they like, begging them to give us what we want.
And we seem to never have asked ourselves how this is seen in the Commission.
There is nothing more calculated to get your hackles up than to be given a task only to find someone attempting to go over your head to your superior, in order to circumvent the policy you have been charged with delivering - by your superior.
It must be particularly irritating to hear Mrs May selling a policy of dividing the four freedoms and cherry picking everything in sight, when she herself, in the Article 50 letter said expressly we would not do it.
If the Commission can draw any conclusions from this displacement activity it's this. We are DESPERATE for frictionless access to their single market and we are going to extraordinary convoluted lengths to get it. The facilitated customs agreement, the common rule book and the so called free trade area are not just a step too far for the EU, but seriously undermine the whole idea of the single market. They are not workable or acceptable. This is why they know more concessions are coming.
Look at us. We rejected the concept of the EEC when it began in 1956 and even created EFTA as a sort of spoiling tactic. We abandoned EFTA when it was obvious our future was far better inside the EEC. Since then we've spent 40 years demanding all kinds of special concessions over budget payments, the euro, Schengen and so on. Now we're leaving we want the whole acquis to be rewritten to suit us.
We are never satisfied. One can easily imagine that we will finally reach some sort of deal, but I would bet money that no sooner is the agreement signed and ratified we will be complaining the terms are either too tight or too loose, not quite right for us at that time. There will be constant arguments you can be sure, as circumstances change and we appear to be losing out.
No doubt some in the EU will push for as loose and distant an agreement as possible on the basis this will mean far less scope for us to kick against it in future. It will not be to our benefit to say the least.
