Frost and Barnier met informally yesterday, six days short of Johnson's 15 October deadline and Johnson himself spoke to President Macron with plans to speak to other EU leaders over the weekend. Things are moving towards an agreement, although it isn't clear yet who blinked but I suspect it was us. There was no press release afterwards and perhaps the absence of one tells us more than if they had made statements.
Mutjaba Raman tweeted:
No statement from @DavidGHFrost or @MichelBarnier today. A good sign? @BorisJohnson also been busy working ☎️ to @EmmanuelMacron & Merkel. Is also expected to speak with @vonderleyen & @eucopresident again ahead of next week's summit
— Mujtaba Rahman (@Mij_Europe) October 9, 2020
Then Nick Gutteeridge of The Guardian tweeted about Frost's tactics, suggesting he had got them spot on with everything coming down to a final hectic trade off between fishing, LPF and governance.
EU has long thought UK wanted the talks to come down to a final high stakes negotiation where LPF, governance, and fish were played off against each other to unlock the rest of a deal that had already been done. Isn't that what has happened? And has Frost got his tactics spot on?
— Nick Gutteridge (@nickgutteridge) October 9, 2020
I confess I'm not sure how this works. Is it that Britain is proposing to betray fishermen in return for escaping LPF rules? I don't believe this is possible, and there is no hint that the two sides are about to enter "the tunnel," - yet.
Whether he got his tactics right or not will be seen shortly. I rather suspect the EU saw this coming months ago and will have prepared for it with extra demands made once the tunnel is entered, daring the UK to pull out at the last minute.
The stupidity of the UKIM bill will become clear in the next few days. The further erosion of trust with the UK government almost casually threatening to break international law must surely mean far more explicit and operationally robust governance measures allowing the EU to take swift retaliatory action if we transgress.
If I was at the table, knowing the EU will stick rigidly to whatever terms are agreed I would press for such clauses knowing they would never be used against Brussels. If the UK refused, I would be very suspicious. Don't forget, even before the UKIM bill we were being tardy about implementing the NI protocol and the argument about the EU having a local Belfast office is surfacing again:
NB. The EU Belfast office issues seems to be back. This conjures vision of EU inspectors barging across the border. This issue SO neuralgic for UK gov obsessed by sovereignty - I know what was signed, but imagine if roles reversed. Can be sorted, but not aggressively, surely? https://t.co/f5S7fHtwZ3
— Peter Foster (@pmdfoster) October 9, 2020
The weekend promises to be a busy one with the government delaying new coronavirus restrictions coming in while they consult with MPs and local government leaders - something you would have thought they would have done months ago. It's another sign of the sheer incompetence at the heart of Whitehall.
In the next few days expect an announcement that a deal has been agreed "in principle" thus meeting Johnson's deadline, and that the negotiating teams will enter "the tunnel" next week . After that, we will also see a lot of terrible jingoistic chest beating that Britain's tough stand against the "EU bullies" and the setting of deadlines paid off and we have got a "great" deal. It will include a further "implementation" period to allow the legal text to be agreed and to allow both sides to make final preparations.
Following on from that, when the full details emerge, there will be howls of outrage from the ERG about the extent to which we have made concessions. But their cries will be drowned out by the fishing communities who will have been used as a bargaining chip and betrayed once more.
The Irish Times have a report about the EU demanding more concessions, which ends with this:
"Though the industry [fishing] employs just 180,000 people and accounts for less than 1 per cent of the bloc’s economic output, politicians warn that cutting off access to fishing waters could devastate coastal communities and drive resentment towards the EU. But some see the issue as surmountable.
“I do not believe that . . . this will be a major impediment to an EU-UK agreement,” the EU diplomat said of fisheries.
“What I see now is that the UK . . . they see it as a lever to gain market access to the European Union. I think that’s the game that we’re seeing right now.”
See what I mean?
