Talks are set to resume in Brussels this morning but only on a "technical level". This is Brussels code to explain there are no actual negotiations going on. To appreciate why this is, one only has to look at the FT this morning which says EU negotiators are "baffled" by our proposals. The sense of optimism springing out of last Thursday's meeting in Cheshire has been replaced by a cold dose of reality. I read of one unnamed EU diplomat who said last week they are entering the tunnel - "but there is only a very small light at the end of it" - this morning that light got even smaller.
Johnson's boundless optimism was infectious (what a great Titanic captain he would have made) among the press many of whom have still not been immunised against it. The more sceptical may soon be proved right, as they so often have been on Brexit.
The FT report:
"Michel Barnier, EU chief Brexit negotiator, told diplomats on Sunday evening that British plans to keep Northern Ireland in the UK’s customs territory while avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland were fiendishly complex and not yet properly worked out."
Johnson's boundless optimism was infectious (what a great Titanic captain he would have made) among the press many of whom have still not been immunised against it. The more sceptical may soon be proved right, as they so often have been on Brexit.
The FT report:
"Michel Barnier, EU chief Brexit negotiator, told diplomats on Sunday evening that British plans to keep Northern Ireland in the UK’s customs territory while avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland were fiendishly complex and not yet properly worked out."
It's like those occasions where you are sitting around with colleagues trying to find a solution to a particularly complex issue. After a while, when all the obvious answers have been dismissed as unworkable, you find yourself putting forward ever more outlandish ideas that seem to have potential until someone points out the obvious flaws. Plans begin to defy the laws of physics or gravity or some other such universal truism. Or it costs multiple amounts more than the problem is worth. So it is with the Irish border and the dual customs zone proposed by the bright young things in No 10.
The British have always lamented the fact that we come up with ideas that others then go on to exploit. What we are seeing in Brussels at the moment is a real-time demonstration of why that is. In this case though nobody is going to exploit our idea - because it simply won't work.
Various reports of Barnier's briefing for the EU27 ambassadors appeared to show a process going far more slowly and encountering more problems than was first thought. Johnson, having made concessions is now under pressure to make yet more as the clock ticks down. And he will. The reasons for this were always clear to us but have only recently become clear to Johnson.
Yesterday's Sunday Times reported a senior Conservative saying that in a recent conversation with the PM about NI and the disruption in GB caused by a no deal Brexit, Johnson said:
"Any of those risks we could cope with but taken collectively they would be a massive challenge to the UK state and no one would choose to go down that route".
Well what a surprise! This is the route he has repeatedly said he would go down.
Alex Wickham at Buzzfeed says even his allies fear a delay is now inevitable. There is simply not enough time left to get an agreement ready by Thursday this week. EU diplomats believe another extension to Article 50 is all but certain. When this happens Johnson will have almost completed the same journey as Theresa May and ended up in exactly the same place - as she will no doubt point out. The final part will be getting parliament to reject it again.
Buzzfeed reported:
"[Barnier] said that talks with the UK had focussed on customs arrangements, with Britain now asking to distinguish between goods from Great Britain that enter Northern Ireland and remain there, and ones that go onto the EU.
"One of several reservations raised by Barnier is the difficulty of knowing whether a good ultimately ends up in the EU’s market and supply chains."
Note the customs issue, serious as it is, is not the only one.
Barnier is not sitting down and helping to write a new agreement, which is what Johnson must have hoped, but asking questions and pointing out flaws so that the UK side has to provide all the answers. Eventually, he hopes this process, by gradually eliminating all the impossible solutions, is going to lead us to the backstop as set out in the existing WA as the only remaining solution which is ready, workable and legally watertight.
At this point Johnson will have a real selling job on his hands. The Spartans and the DUP will come under enormous pressure to back the deal they rejected twelve months ago. It will put down a real marker for all the future talks with the EU. The supplicant will realise he is a supplicant. It will be an important moment.
MPs return to Westminster this morning to hear the Queen's speech with some newspapers, presumably taking their lead from Downing Street, claiming she will say her government is going to make this country "the greatest place on earth". This is straight out of the pages of The Beano. He has no majority to begin with and nobody expects him to last more than a few weeks before a general election has to be held.
In any case all we want is a bit of basic competence and the scrapping of the old Pacer trains on Northern lines, never mind Utopia.
This will be a momentous week. By the end of it some of the Brexit fog will be lifted and we will be able to see more clearly what direction we are going in. A delay will probably be the beginning of the end for Brexit. If Johnson for all his bluster couldn't do it who can?
This will be a momentous week. By the end of it some of the Brexit fog will be lifted and we will be able to see more clearly what direction we are going in. A delay will probably be the beginning of the end for Brexit. If Johnson for all his bluster couldn't do it who can?
