Brexit Negotiations so far feel like the Phoney War

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So far, we have discovered very little about what the United Kingdom’s future relationship will look like with the European Union post Brexit. The formal declaration that the UK would be leaving occurred on the 29 March 2017 with the United Kingdom serving the withdrawal notice under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union.

The negotiations really started on the 19th June 2017 when the British Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (catchy title!), David Davis, landed in Brussels to negotiate the exit terms with the European Union’s head negotiator, Michael Barnier.

The British Government’s position had been strongly weakened less than ten days before when Theresa May and her Conservative government lost their majority in the House of Commons. This was after they had voluntarily called the election to consolidate their majority. In hindsight, it was a poor decision though at the time most pundits believed It would deliver a larger majority. It didn’t and was possibly the worst prelude to negotiations May could have imagined.

Since then, there has been plenty of back and forth from London to Brussels. Talks are ongoing but seem to deliver very little in terms of concrete results, at least for the public. In fact, I think many people are already suffering from “Brexit fatigue”. Maybe it’s part of the Tory strategy, deliver so little and trickle news to the media so slowly that people eventually stop caring. Unfortunately for them, this won’t work as the media continues to focus on every announcement.

It doesn’t help that the Tories are currently undergoing an internecine leadership battle between those who want to either reverse Brexit or at the very least mitigate its impact and those who believe Brexit will be the greatest thing to happen to the UK since they found oil in the North Sea. This allows the British tabloids to continue their desire for the hardest possible Brexit through mouthpieces like Jacob Rees-Mogg or Nigel Farage.

We have seen some battle lines drawn on divorce payment, the role of the European Court of Justice in any (yet to be agreed) transition period. However, nothing is confirmed. Personally, I believe it will be very hard to the UK to make real, concrete progress until either Theresa May is deposed and a new leader who openly represents one of the afore mentioned factions emerges or, even more dramatically, a General Election is called and Labour emerge, championing a soft Brexit.

Somehow the European Union has claimed enough progress has been made to move to the second stage of the negotiations in December. The Phoney War lasted eight months between the UK’s declaration of war on Germany in September 1939 and Germany’s first offensive on the Low Countries on the 10 May 1940. December will mark approximately eight months of the Brexit talks.

As each day passes with little progress and updates I think it is more likely that the EU negotiators will start the genuine war and publicly deliver some hard truths to the British Government. This is no not really in anyone’s interests (I haven’t even touched upon Ireland in this article though I have speculated on how the internal Tory struggle is dangerous before here).

The problem for the British is that while they bicker and postulate that any bad deal will hurt the remaining 27 EU nations more, the European Union is going about its business in a discreet and diligent manner. They have started to send out signals that they are losing patience with David Davis and co. but I still think they are yet to use any of the weapons at their disposal. Davis publicly calling his European counterparts the “enemy” gives them further justification for harsher measures. The phoney war is going to soon end and I believe it will be the European side who fire the first bullet. This bullet may even be the coup de grâce for May’s shambolic reign as Prime Minister.