These Brexit negotiations are all a loathsome, disgraceful embarrassment

Of all the moments of drama in the Eurozone crisis, there was one that undeniably crossed the line into farce. It was June 2015, and Greece’s Left-wing government had reached the end of the line. It had provoked and insulted its EU creditors. The banks had shut down. Cash was being rationed. There was one decision left to make: fold or call the EU’s bluff.

And despite all his fiery rhetoric, all his bluster and Leftist credentials, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras blinked – and held a referendum. “Should we accept the EU’s terms or not?” it asked. His government, he declared, would campaign emphatically for “no”. He got his wish: the Greeks voted “no”. And what do you think he did? The next day, Mr Tsipras called up Greece’s creditors and capitulated in full.

Federalist types always chuckle when this story comes up. I have a horrible suspicion, though. In a few years’ time, it won’t be the tale of the Greek “no! Well, OK, yes” that creases their faces. It will be the ridiculous, embarrassing story of Brexit.

The last two weeks have brought only the latest in a series of false steps by our Government, but the mistakes are getting more frequent and obvious. Whereas before, Theresa May was able to go at least a few months at a time without making some new provocative bluff followed by a concession, they’re now coming every few days. What’s stunning, though, when you look back at the whole gamut of British mistakes, is how comprehensively they cover every negotiating category you could imagine.

From start to finish, Britain has set the wrong tone. We have looked petty and clueless, our ministers gratuitously insulting the EU and setting themselves up as enemies of the project whom Brussels would inevitably feel roused to punish. Among many, there were Boris Johnson’s repeated comparisons of the EU to the Third Reich, Michael Gove’s suggestion that Brexit would “liberate” European countries and Jeremy Hunt’s recent comparison of the EU with the USSR.

There have been the basic failures of diplomatic and administrative competence. There was the Brexiteers’ refusal to engage with the complexity of anything they wanted to do. There was the UK’s failure to spot and pre-empt the hardening of Ireland’s position last autumn; the lazy assumption that Angela Merkel would come to our rescue; the deluded spinning that last December’s withdrawal agreement was just a “fudge” in which we had “got one over” the EU; the resulting total mismatch in expectations as to what Britain was prepared to concede; the obviously false notion that the EU would ever countenance a “mutual recognition” agreement rather than imposing its regulations upon us; the three months in which Britain did nothing to translate its favoured interpretation of the December document into legal text; the embarrassingly botched translation of the Chequers white paper into European languages; and the unbelievable failure to anticipate how the Salzburg summit would play out.