Dear Mrs May

I am taking the liberty of writing to you with advice on your EU negotiating strategy stemming from my own experiences. In so doing I am running a serious risk of seeming presumptuous. Britain is, of course, not Greece. However, Brussels is Brussels, whether its functionaries are dealing with London or Athens.

Reading about the leaks that followed the famous dinner you hosted at 10 Downing Street and, soon after, hearing Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, outline his negotiating brief brought back awful memories and confirmed that they have already begun deploying the same sinister tactics against you that they used against me and the government I served in.

For the benefit of full disclosure, let me state for the record that before the referendum I campaigned across Britain against Brexit on the grounds that while the EU’s policies and tactics must be resisted energetically, leaving it was not the solution: staying in the EU to oppose what this EU is doing was far preferable. Indeed, while representing Greece at Ecofin (the council of Europe’s finance ministers), I had entertained hopes of forging an alliance with the then Chancellor of the Exchequer (now editor of this paper) with whom, despite our ideological differences, I shared considerable common ground vis-à-vis the EU and its discontents, including the view that Brexit/Grexit were inimical to the interests of our peoples. On the other hand, my criticisms of Brussels, and in particular its functionaries’ contempt for democracy, have been closer to those of my friend Norman Lamont and other Eurosceptics among your colleagues.

While the clock is ticking away, and your country is caught up in pre-election fever, there are two potential mistakes I wish to warn against: First, the belief that a strong mandate on June 8 will enhance your ability to negotiate. Second, that meaningful negotiations are possible within the less than two years left after the triggering of Article 50.

Your mandate will, I believe, enrage Brussels in proportion to its magnitude and steel their preordained determination to frustrate the negotiations in order to procure a mutually disadvantageous outcome. Why would they pursue mutual disadvantage? Because faced with a choice between an agreement that is to the advantage of the peoples of Europe and one that bolsters their own power within the EU institutions at the expense of Europe’s social economies, the Brussels establishment, and the powerful politicians behind them, will choose the latter every time.

In 2015 the proposals I was tabling, of a moderate Greek public debt restructure, lower tax rates and deep reforms, would have allowed the EU to reclaim more of European taxpayers’ loans to Greece. Except that getting back their taxpayers’ money was lower on their list of priorities than signalling to the Spaniards, the Irish, the Italians etc. that if they dared to elect a government promising to challenge the EU’s authority, they would be crushed.

Thankfully, Britain is too rich to crush. Alas, Britain is not too big to be pushed into a disadvantageous form of Brexit as a deterrent to other Europeans voting against the edicts of the Brussels apparatchiks. The political utility to the Brussels establishment of leading the UK-EU negotiations to impasse is greater than any disutility they might experience from watching European people and businesses lose out.

If I am right, negotiations will be an exercise in futility and frustration. Barnier’s two-phase negotiation announcement amounts to a rejection of the principle of … negotiation. He is, effectively, saying to you: First you give me everything I am asking for unconditionally (Phase 1) and only then will I hear what you want (Phase 2). This is nothing short of a declaration of hostilities and, moreover, of his lack of a mandate to negotiate with you in good faith.

Moreover, if you try to bypass Brussels, in order to communicate directly with, say, Angela Merkel, you will be given the EU runaround (i.e. Merkel refers you to Juncker, who refers you to Barnier who suggests you go back to Merkel, and so on ad infinitum). Meanwhile, the leaks about your ministers’ “lack of preparedness” will be flooding out of the meeting rooms as part of a propaganda war of attrition.

Is there a way to escape this trap? Since negotiations in good faith are impossible, any such escape must involve adopting a stance that annuls them. What stance? There are two possibilities.

One strategy is to request an off-the-shelf Norway-like (European Economic Area) agreement for an interim period equal in duration no less than the full term of your next Parliament, whose members the people of Britain will have mandated to debate and to decide the future UK-EU arrangements in relative peace and quiet. This is the small “c” conservative, gradualist approach that, on the one hand, renders Barnier and his team of negotiators redundant while on the other, creates certainty for business and citizens and allows Merkel to breathe a sigh of relief at the thought that the political “hot potato” will land in her successor’s lap.

A second strategy, consistent with the (ill-conceived, in my opinion) haste to end free movement and the continued role of Europe’s courts in the UK, would be to legislate unilaterally and withdraw from all negotiations, leaving it to Brussels to come to you with a realistic offer regarding free trade etc. Part of this unilateral legislation could involve granting British citizenship to all EU residents unconditionally, followed by a statement that delivers you the moral high ground: “We did what is right by EU citizens in the UK. Let us now see how our European neighbours behave to our citizens residing in their countries.”

JFK once said: “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.” In a Europe indisposed to genuine negotiations, never fear to walk away from their phoney negotiations.

With best wishes,

Yanis Varoufakis

Yanis Varoufakis’s new book, Adults in the Room: My Battle Against Europe’s Deep Establishment, is published by The Bodley Head.