As the EU finalises its negotiating guidelines, it's time for Brexiters to get real

The future of Britain is going to be shaped to a far greater extent by Saturday’s EU-27 Council meeting than it will be by the June general election. That is one of the many ironies of the Brexiter mantra of ‘taking back control’, because whilst the chain of coming events was begun not by the EU but by the British referendum, the shape of those events will be very much down to the EU.

So insular has the discussion in the UK been before and since the referendum that one might think that Brexit is simply a matter of the UK formulating its demands. The EU will then fall into line because ‘it’s in their interests’ or ‘it’s in Germany’s interests’ or even because ‘it’s in German’s car industry’s interests’; and anyway because ‘we’re the world’s fifth largest economy’. There are many versions of this wishful thinking, all of them completely devoid of any understanding whatsoever of how the EU – or the world in general – operates. If it was how they think, then Britain would never have left the EU, since doing so is so far at odds with both our national and business interests.

It’s true that in the immediate aftermath of the referendum Britain might have been able to pursue a soft Brexit of single market membership. That would have taken considerable diplomatic and political skill, but it might have been achievable. Instead, everything the government has done since then has had the effect of making goodwill and room for manoeuvre disappear. And not just the government. EU leaders (and their electorates) see and have disdain for the infantile headlines of the Brexit press, and they don’t simply laugh off Farage’s oafish rudeness, on the odd occasions he turns up at the European Parliament, or Johnson’s boorish buffoonery about ‘prison guards’ and ‘Prosecco exports’.

So whilst Britain has been engaging in an orgy of stupidity and insularity, the EU has, almost since the day after the referendum, been quietly and consistently developing its stance, as explained in this excellent three-part summary of the EU’s position by David Allen Green of the FT. It is a stance that has changed very little from what was indicated before the referendum, and every leave voter who cared to could have known in broad terms what it would be. None of them can say there was no warning.

The time for wishful thinking, gutter press headlines and vapid slogans ended when Article 50 was triggered. Since then, Brexit has come face to face with reality. Donald Tusk’s immediate response was polite in tone, but uncompromisingly plain in content. Primary issues to agree would be the rights of EU citizens in the UK, the (or at least the methodology for calculating the) British exit bill for commitments already made, and Northern Ireland. Exit terms would have to be, at least, progressed first to a degree acceptable to the EU (not the UK, the EU) and only then could there be the beginning of talks on future terms, including trade. Interestingly, almost immediately the British government accepted this definition of process, even though it was exactly the opposite of what they had set out in the A50 letter, and the implications for the time frame for a trade deal that went with it. Reality bites #1.

The European Council draft negotiation guidelines in full contained greater detail, but no surprises save for the mention of Gibraltar (which I have discussed elsewhere), including emphasis that no sector-by-sector single market membership would be envisaged and that no bilateral talks between members of the EU-27 and the UK would be allowed. Again, both of these had been hoped for and even expected by the government which, again, almost immediately accepted that it would not be so. Reality bites #2.

Unless Saturday’s meeting produced something unexpected (and reports of the Luxembourg pre-meeting today suggest not) we already know that it will be likely to endorse the draft guidelines, albeit that leaks suggest some hardening, especially on financial services and on the issue of EU nationals in the UK. On the latter, this is likely to include a requirement for a quicker and simpler citizenship process and the guarantee of their legal rights. There is a particular, and instructive, symbolic importance to this. The EU is negotiating for itself and its citizens. That should seem obvious, but it points up both the determination of the EU to negotiate en bloc, and the fact that this is not going to be like all the EU negotiations of past decades where the UK has been negotiating as a member state and, very often, able to shape the nature of the EU. Now, there are very clearly two sides across the table. Reality bites #3.

The fundamental underlying issue is one that almost every EU spokesperson has made clear before and since the referendum. There will be no deal agreed by the EU in which Britain has a better situation as a non-member than it would have as a member of the EU. That logic is simple and understandable. But that does not mean that Britain has nothing to negotiate for – there are better and worse versions of a 'less good' situation than membership.

There are two great dangers for Britain now. One is that key parts of economic and social activity simply pack up and go without waiting for the outcome of the negotiations, with long-term and serious consequences. There is already evidence of an academic brain drain, with all that that implies for British pre-eminence in research, especially scientific and medical research, and its very successful university ‘export business’. Likewise, plans to move financial services jobs out of London are proceeding apace, with all that that implies for the already very eroded and fragile UK tax base and, hence, for public services.

This first danger might be minimised if the second one is avoided. To put it bluntly, Britain – and Brexiters in particular – have got to get real, and quickly. The crazy reaction to the mention of Gibraltar in the draft guidelines is an object lesson in what needs to be avoided. In particular, the danger now and in the coming months is that Brexiters in politics and the press whip up the idea that the EU is ‘punishing’ Britain for leaving. That is nonsense, and as Tusk and others have repeatedly said there is no need for punishment: Brexit is punishment enough. Brexiters of course will disagree and see Brexit as no punishment at all. Fine, but in that case accept that leaving means leaving, and that the EU will pursue its own interests which do not, now, include us, and drop any talk of being punished for a decision that you made with all the facts available to you.

This is a big ask of Brexiters, because it goes against the victim mentality that propelled them to victory in the referendum. But they need to own that victory now. They frequently complain that ‘remoaners’ are talking down the country and seek viciously to silence them. But the real damage to the country comes from Brexiters refusing to deal in a detailed, pragmatic way with the consequences of the choice they have made. Every screaming headline and every bellicose punch-drunk interview from a Brexiter politician damages us more. Taking back control requires, first, a degree of self-control and, second, an acceptance that having, in their terms, done so by winning the referendum, they now have to face the realities of what it means.


Update (30 April 2017): Finalised guidelines did, indeed, change little apart from those areas expected. In the meantime, Theresa May's talk of the EU-27 'lining up' against UK indicative of exactly the 'punishment' rhetoric I warned of.