Former UK ambassador to the EU uses speech in Dublin to urge leaders to move past technocratic approach to Brexit talks

Brexit negotiators on both sides of the Channel risk “sleepwalking into a major crisis” that could poison relations for a generation, the UK’s former ambassador to the European Union Sir Ivan Rogers, has warned.

In a speech to the British Irish Chambers of Commerce in Dublin, he urged EU leaders to move beyond a technocratic approach to Brexit and give serious thought to “the British question” or risk “endless toxic running battles”.

“There is now, in my view, a higher risk than the markets are currently pricing of a disorderly breakdown in Brexit negotiations, and of our sleepwalking into a major crisis,” he said. “Not because either negotiating team actively seeks it, but precisely because each side misreads each other’s real incentives and political constraints and cannot find any sort of landing zone for a deal, however provisional.”

He said it was “tempting” and “an understandable accusation” for European capitals to think that “the British have brought all this on themselves without much apparent thought or honesty”. But he urged leaders to take a longer view, or risk a brittle settlement that would not last.

Rogers resigned as the UK’s ambassador to the EU last January after being attacked as “the gloomy mandarin” by Tory Eurosceptics, who dismissed his warnings that leaving the EU would be be complicated process that would dominate UK political life for a decade.

In a parting email to staff he urged British officials to challenge ill-founded arguments and “muddled thinking”, while another former top civil servant lamented his departure as a “wilful and total destruction of EU expertise”.

In hisspeech on Thursday night Rogers criticised the “delusional” thinking of British Eurosceptics and said they knew that a genuine no-deal Brexit “would bring several key sectors of the economy to a halt”. He said that advocates of a no-deal Brexit expected to trigger a host of mini deals at the 11th hour.

No-deal advocates “argue that European self interest will be the deus ex machina which delivers a whole set of legal mini deals ensuring that it’s all all right on the night,” Rogers said. “This is, I fear, simply delusional.”

Much of his speech was a plea to EU27 member states to take a strategic approach to Brexit, recognising that they cannot have “just a bog-standard third-country relationship like any other” with the UK.

But Rogers was not attempting to sell Theresa May’s Chequers plan, an array of proposals that includes an unprecedented customs deal and “common rule book” for goods that the EU has rejected. Rogers says the prime minister’s compromise plan “contains many wholly unsaleable elements and will not [and] cannot be agreed by the 27”. But he urged them to think seriously about proposals on governance and the common legal and political system to manage future ties.

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The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has long said the UK’s refusal to accept the jurisdiction of the European court and other red linescan only mean a free trade agreement, which would leave the UK as a “third” (foreign) country.

Barnier sees the Chequers plan as a means to reach a Canada-style free trade deal, plus additional agreements on aviation, internal security and foreign policy.

Rogers is fearful that the EU will go down this path, spelling it out in a scant political declaration at the end of talks, whichMay will then struggle to sell to the Commons. In this case, Rogers warned, the EU risks an accidental no-deal.

If the EU goes down this path it can “congratulate itself over the cigars that it has royally screwed the exiting state with a deal heavily skewed to the EU’s advantage,” Rogers said. However, he warned that in the long run this could damage the EU’s own interests. Both sides, Rogers said, would lose if the relationship descended into one “bedevilled”by trade disputes and mutual recriminations.



