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The big picture

It took just 90 seconds for EU leaders at their summit last week to decide, as long expected, that insufficient progress had been made on the key article 50 issues of citizens’ rights, the Irish border and the financial settlement to allow talks to move on to the UK’s future relationship with the bloc.

Member states agreed instead to discuss the parameters of a possible trade deal among themselves in the hope that advances are made on the outstanding issues – of which the biggest, by far, remains the scale of the UK’s financial offer – before the next summit on 14 December.



Donald Tusk, the European council president, tried to let Theresa May down gently, suggesting all hope was not lost:

My impression is that the reports of the deadlock between the EU and the UK have been exaggerated. While progress is not sufficient, it doesn’t mean there is no progress at all.

But the French president, Emmanuel Macron, was less encouraging, accusing Brexiters of trying to “bluff” the EU into softening its stance by talking up a no-deal scenario and stressing the UK was “not halfway there” on the financial offer.

May said the UK was examining “line by line” how much it would pay, but did not deny she had told EU leaders she had not said “the final word”. She hinted at her political difficulties at home, pleading with EU leaders at the summit dinner for an outcome she could “defend to our people”.

In her subsequent statement to parliament on the summit, May insisted progress was being made in the talks. Britain was preparing for every eventuality, she said, but wanted to leave in a smooth way and sought a new partnership with the EU.

In a move likely to alarm business, she also appeared to confirm earlier remarks by the Brexit secretary, David Davis, implying that if no trade deal was reached by this time next year there would be no transition period, either:

The view from Europe

Oh dear, another May–Juncker–Barnier dinner, this time in Brussels. At the last one, in London in April, you’ll remember, the European commission president was said to have found the prime minister “deluded” and “living in a parallel universe”.

It doesn’t seem to have gone a great deal better at a pre-summit dinner on 16 October. An account of the soirée in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described the prime minister as “begging for help” and appearing “anxious”, “tormented”, “despondent and discouraged”.

Martin Selmayr, Jean-Claude Juncker’s combative chief of staff, who also attended, strongly denied UK accusations that he had leaked the details, and the European commission president later said the whole story was rubbish:

I had an excellent working dinner with Theresa May. She was in good shape, she was not tired, she was fighting as is her duty so everything for me was OK … [Pleading] is not the style of British prime ministers.

Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, said at the summit the divorce talks “may take a bit longer than we thought” but “I don’t have any reason to believe we are not going to be successful”. She also warned, however, that the second stage – trade talks – would be “undeniably more complicated than the first”.



That’s partly because the EU27 will find it more difficult to define a mandate for those talks, she said: it needs to protect the integrity of the single market, while avoiding damage to its economic interests.

But it is also because the EU27 believe the UK has not moved much beyond “have your cake and eat it” on trade, and refuses to recognise that quitting EU rules and courts to “take back control” will mean less access to the single market.

The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, said a final trade deal could take years to negotiate and even then Britain could expect little better than the one the bloc struck with Canada. Transitional arrangements might be possible before March 2019, he said, but a deal would have to be “very different” from the status quo.

Meanwhile, back in Westminster

While the rest of the EU focuses on the wider issues of Brexit, the Westminster debate has remained mired in the twin issues of the eventual size of a UK severance payment and a possible no-deal departure.

On the divorce bill, Conservative MPs seem to be edging gradually way from Boris Johnson’s previous “go whistle” stance, with the international trade secretary, Liam Fox, not explicitly rejecting the idea of a possible sum of about €60bn (£53bn).

Even Nigel Evans, a backbench Tory on the more vehemently pro-leave side of the party, conceded on Sunday that the UK had to continue paying up for EU obligations such as pensions.

The idea of a crash-out Brexit on to WTO trade terms remains an official possibility, with Fox saying Emmanuel Macron had been “completely wrong” to accuse the UK of bluffing over such an idea; he described it as “not exactly a nightmare scenario”.

Labour very much disagrees and has promised to seek to block the possibility. The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, predicted at the weekend that there were sufficient Conservative rebels to ensure Labour could force May into giving MPs a final say on any Brexit deal.

Starmer hopes this veto will become an amendment to the much-delayed EU withdrawal bill, which seeks to transpose European statutes into UK law but has been bogged down in disagreement over the scale of executive powers it grants ministers.

Not even Labour can sing entirely from the same hymnsheet, however: its London mayor, Sadiq Khan, said parliament rejecting a deal could bring a second referendum – an idea rejected by the parliamentary party.

You should also know:

Read these

In the Financial Times (paywall), Martin Wolf takes aim at what he calls “the seven zombie ideas of Brexit” and dismantles them one by one:

It is highly likely that the Brexit negotiations will fail, imposing an abrupt shock on the UK economy and ruining relations with its neighbours. This view is condemned by those who insist we must be more positive. That is like advising someone who has just jumped off a building that, if only he thought positively, he could fly. To understand the state we are now in we need to understand the zombie ideas that hold so many Brexiters in their grip.

The zombie ideas are that the EU is being unreasonable; the UK is in a stronger position than the EU; the EU’s priorities are wrong; the UK is an economic powerhouse; the UK can survive well without a favourable deal; that a shift to WTO terms for trade with the EU would be smooth; and that those who deny Brexiters’ claims are traitors or saboteurs:

In a liberal democracy, we are all entitled to our opinions and to seek to overturn what we consider grossly mistaken decisions. The saboteurs are those whose zombie ideas have brought the UK to a ruinous break with its neighbours and natural partners. It is our right to argue this.

In the Guardian, Arwa Mahdawi says (warning: irony alert) that after a year and a half of remoaning, she has decided to blindly follow Britain’s wise leaders to a post-EU wonderland. It’s as if a 350m-tonne weight has been lifted from her shoulders:



If you’re one of those sad, unsaved souls still losing sleep about Britain’s messy divorce from Europe then I have some advice: cheer up. Remember being British doesn’t mean you have to be miserable all the time; a little bit of optimism is OK. So, please, I implore you: take a deep breath, ignore all logic and reason, dismiss any inconvenient truths and look on the bright side of Brexit … Increase your capacity for Brullshit; once you’ve increased your capacity for tolerating nonsense you’ll find Brexit starts to make a lot more sense.

Tweet of the week

Two for the price of one this week. First, France’s ambassador to the United States offers this:

Gérard Araud (@GerardAraud) Maybe I am too cartesian but leaving the largest free trade area in the world and 53 free trade agreements on behalf of free trade is weird.

Next, Ian Bremmer of Eurasiagroup offers this: