Why is the UK making such a mess of A50 negotiations?

The obvious answer to this question is that the negotiator, the UK government, is completely split on what it wants. But that is only part of an explanation for this shambles. In the first year I think actions were dictated by a completely unreal perception about power, and perhaps more recently by a need to avoid a coup by the hardline Brexiteers.

The people who might have thought about the negotiations before the vote itself, the Leave side, didn’t do so partly because they didn’t expect to win. But they also had completely unrealistic expectations of the relative power of each side. This was an advantage during the campaign, because they could say ridiculous things about the economic consequences of Brexit without knowing it was a lie. But once they had won, there were only two ways to go, and either of them led to an early implementation of Article 50.

The first possibility is that after the campaign they continued to believe that German car makers would pressure the German government and the EU to give us what we want, so why not bring that on by triggering A50. The second was that they began to doubt this, but that in turn led to a fear that once the people found out they had been told falsehoods about leaving they would change their minds. That too lead to an urgent need to trigger A50 before this happened.

But Leavers did not have a majority in parliament. Remain MPs must surely have realised that the EU had much more power than the UK (the proportionate cost of no deal is much greater for the UK), and that once A50 was triggered the clock was ticking for the UK, not the EU. David Allen Green has justifiably said I told you so, and I knew when I wrote a post entitled “The Folly of triggering Article 50” in November 2016 that I was just repeating expert opinion, and to be honest common sense. As I said there

“this has absolutely nothing to do with whether you voted to Remain or Leave. Anyone who actually wants a good deal from the EU when we leave should realise that the UK’s negotiating position becomes instantly weaker once Article 50 is triggered.”

The worst explanation for why the majority of MPs ignored this advice was that they didn’t hear it. (We know the Prime Minister did hear that advice from Sir Ivan Rogers.) Almost as bad was that they heard it but thought it was just a desperate ploy by experts to delay leaving. Those who want to say it is all because of mixed motives from the Labour leadership will do so. But I suspect there is a simpler explanation: MPs felt voting to delay was ‘politically impossible’.

Part of the reason it was ‘politically impossible’ is that the standard of reporting and debate among broadcasters on these issues is so poor that the argument that triggering A50 was bad tactics would simply not have got a proper hearing. In addition the tabloids would have screamed “enemies of the people” just as they did when three judges allowed MPs a vote. In this sense our media not only gave us a Leave vote, they forced an early triggering of A50 which was not in the country’s interests.

As I wrote in that earlier post, it “would only be a slight exaggeration to say [triggering A50] allows the EU to dictate terms” which is exactly what they are doing. In these circumstances, the best approach to the negotiations is to treat them as a cooperative exercise rather than a zero sum game. Yet we were led by Theresa May and David Davis, who were instead determined to treat this as a classical zero sum negotiation where, because you had more power, your best hope was to make the other side believe you will walk away. Yet that walking away threat was never credible, partly because of reasons already given, but more importantly because a deal on the EU's terms was better than no deal.

But despite this, in our negotiators minds the delusion that we have power in these negotiations as long as we threaten to walk away seems to persist. The lack of flexibility by the EU can be dismissed as them playing hardball. As firms move abroad because they need to plan and they cannot be certain of any transition arrangements, the cost of delusion will be paid for in lost UK output and lower incomes.

It is just possible that both May and Davis have begun to realise this, but the delusion of power has been replaced by something else, which is the fear of a coup by Brexiteers. The pro-Brexit views of Tory party members makes such a threat credible, but any coup would have to happen well before the negotiations ended. Perhaps the reason May is now being so slow to move is to make the possibility of a coup less likely. But perhaps that involves a level of strategic thinking the Prime Minister is not capable of and Davis has simply given up.

Whatever the motivation, the end result has one certain consequence: the economy is damaged. As one final example, take the length of the transition period. The logical thing to do is to have a transition period until a new trade agreement is agreed. Anything else involves significant economic and administrative costs. But the UK government does not seek this because it pretends a trade agreement can be done quickly, and it pretends this nonsense to avoid a confrontation with the hardliners.

Even if this turns out to be pretend and extend, because the transition period will keep on being rolled forward at the last minute, this arrangement suits the EU and damages the UK. It is good for the EU because their exports to the UK do not suffer. It damages the UK because the uncertainty continues to make moving production to the EU rather than exporting to the EU attractive. Just one more way that the fantasies of Brexit hardliners are costing us all.