Katya Adler at the BBC wrote a nice Twitter thread about the state of play in the latest round of negotiations sheduled to finish today. One of the points she makes is that Brussels expects hard line Brexiteers like Ian Duncan Smith and David Davis to say "if the deal is going to be thin anyway, then better for the UK to make no compromises eg over state aid and make clean break with no deal." This has been the plan all along, as Brussels realised at the outset.
No doubt this was Cummings' cunning plan. Ask for very little publicly as if we aren't really bothered and in this way pressurise the EU to make concessions. I don't think it's worked out very well and Adler says the EU still thinks a deal is still more likely than no deal - "But only just." This is the EU returning the compliment.
Both sides have been talking tough but in the end it isn't going to make any difference. If you start with very low value cards you can bluff for a long time but in the end if your opponent has the better hand he will win - especially when he knows you have a weak hand, as the EU do. Here's her thread:
After short summer break, post #Brexit trade talks with EU have resumed. Don’t expect breakthroughs this week BUT do sit up and pay attention from now on. Remember those Brexiteer promises? If a deal is to be struck this autumn, compromises are inevitable - on both sides /1— katya adler (@BBCkatyaadler) August 19, 2020
She says the EU insists if there’s no agreement on state aid, there’ll be no trade deal at all and she points to the fact we have not yet officially presented our post-Brexit state aid regime. Without that Brussels says there can be no compromise on an unknown quantity. And time is running out
The problem here is that if the UK does publish its future state aid rules and they are in line with what Cummings wants - the ability to shovel tax payers money into private businesses - the EU will make no compromise anyway. They are between a rock and a hard place and will almost certainly have to accept EU rules. I discount totally the idea we will leave without a deal. This is not going to happen.
The damage to British industry will be serious whatever happens but there are all sorts of areas like cabotage as we saw yesterday and the question of equivalence for the financial sector where the EU are withholding any sort of agreement until Britain signs on the dotted line. We also learned yesterday that the EU has rejected any idea of an agreement allowing us to return migrants who cross the channel. All of this adds to the pressure on us to comply.
As Adler says, making a compromise on state aid is a political decision and the same is true on fishing but with Johnson on holiday in Scotland (camping we are told although nobody believes it) and the government sinking in the polls as the A-level, B-tech and GCSE exam chaos rumbles on, they can scarcely afford food shortages in January. So, don't worry compromises are coming.
It will be the hard Brexiteers who will be squealing the loudest when the details are finally published and that won't be until October at the earliest.
Even the normally loyal Daily Mail is beginning to lose faith Johnson:
The actual Mail Headline pic.twitter.com/MViCPsOH6x— No Minister (@DemRulesUK) August 21, 2020
On Wednesday Stephen Glover launched a stinging attack on Johnson saying his silence on the exam fiasco "heaps arrogance upon incompetence." Perhaps this is less surprising than it seems since there is little love lost between the two men. Glover quit The Spectator when Johnson was editor over a spiked article about job losses at The Telegraph although Glover joined in the general right wing triumphalism on December 13 last year when he wrote:
"Has any leading politician in modern times been the subject of so much vitriol as Boris Johnson? He has been written off as a liar, lazy and unreliable. Political commentators and comedians have feasted on his alleged weaknesses.
"But if last night’s exit poll and early results can be trusted, Mr Johnson has pulled off one of the most spectacular political triumphs in modern political history.
"This amazing performance is a damning reproach to all those largely metropolitan sophisticates who dismissed him as a privileged buffoon – the old Etonian Bullingdon boy – supposedly out of touch with the British people."
Now it turns out the political commentators and comedians were right - he is a liar, lazy and unreliable and a privileged buffoon Who would have thought it? Not Stephen Glover at the Daily Mail - until now that is.
