This is a good article HERE on the LSE website, about how the EU, perceived here as a bloated, sclerotic and undemocratic organisation full of faceless bureaucrats, has actually run rings round the UK with May and Davis at the helm. It highlights how the EU is both rules based and transparent with a powerful, democratically elected parliament and has been well ahead of us from the beginning. The article describes it as a lean, mean negotiating machine.
The unity between the Commission and the Council of Ministers has surprised many. Barnier has been excellent with clear, consistent and concise interventions and the member states are right behind him.
But it overlooks two crucial points. Firstly, because Article 50 set out a clear process for leaving there has been no argument over how it should be done. Had there been a need to agree a process one can easily imagine all sorts of disagreements. But it is always easier in a group to accept the common rules, the status quo, especially when they're embedded in a treaty. Brexiteers may look back on their insistence on Article 50 being inserted into the Lisbon treaty as a big mistake. Without it they may have found themselves negotiating with a much weaker, more fractured EU.
Secondly, the UK has played right into Barnier's hands. The lack of a coherent plan with agreed objectives for the future relationship coupled with the ridiculous setting of red lines had Mrs May tying her own hands and allowing the EU to logically argue the only option is a CETA style trade deal. Once this position has been reached, and knowing the economic damage it would cause the UK, all the EU have had to do is sit and wait for us to decide what we really want - and which of our own red lines must be erased to get it.
The real key, in my opinion, is and always was, the economy. Brexit is going to hurt and the question the government has to address, sooner or later, is how much economic damage it's prepared to accept to deliver it.
