30 October 2018

Paul McGrade: A no-deal Brexit would not end negotiations – and the EU knows it

The UK Brexit debate has consistently misread the EU’s aims, and its determination to pursue them. We are now at risk of doing so over the negotiating endgame. No deal, if it happens, will be a process – not an event – managed by the EU to their negotiating advantage, just as the article 50 talks have been throughout. The difference is that a no-deal process would be much shorter and more brutal for the UK.

The Brexit debate in the UK often misses the very modern political motivations of the EU27. Yes, they are determined to defend the rules-based single market, built up through decades of compromise. But leading EU member states have a political aim closer to home; they must defeat the idea of a painless Brexit. Otherwise, they fear, the European parliament elections next June will be dominated by their own populist opponents, who will claim that they, too, can shed the obligations but keep the benefits of EU membership.

The UK’s bruising experience in the Brexit negotiations, and the likely outcome, may have already made the point clearly enough. But if British politics remains stuck on demanding the impossible, as the EU see it, no deal can also become a process to make the message crystal clear.

Some key EU governments think that a “managed” no deal, with the worst effects mitigated for the 27 by temporary recognition of UK standards to allow, for example, direct flights to continue, would be bearable. The European commission is preparing plans along these lines. There would be emergency support for those, like Ireland, who were worst hit. And, crucially, the crisis would be short. The impact on the UK from customs delays alone would be so disastrous that London would quickly come back to the negotiating table.

In this sense it doesn’t matter whether the UK government or parliament is the blocker to a deal. For the EU, no deal is not an end state; it is the continuation of negotiation by other means.

This is not fully appreciated in the UK, where – because of the internal struggle for Conservative MPs’ votes – both sides deliberately talk about no deal in extreme, quasi-religious terms. The UK will “fall” into a dark pit of rationing and transport chaos if backbenchers defy the prime minister, or (as hard Brexiteers have it) the country will purify itself of self-doubt in a baptism of fire. Either way, no deal is depicted as a long, hard struggle.

In reality, as cabinet ministers are realising, no deal would quickly bring the UK to a halt, and destroy the government which presided over it. [...]

Full article on The Guardian

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