Brexit weekly briefing: May's Florence speech fails to unblock talks

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The big picture

It was all about the speech, and then it was all about whether the speech would do the job it was intended to do. Apparently, it didn’t.

In a nondescript room in Florence on Friday, before an audience composed mainly of British journalists, Theresa May tried to explain, again, what “Brexit means Brexit” might actually mean.

With article 50 divorce talks stalled in Brussels, her first task was to unblock them – while not ceding so much to the EU that she antagonised the Conservative Brexit ultras in her own cabinet and parliament.

So she offered a two-year transition period after Brexit day: existing rules and market access would stay the same, and Britain would keep paying into the EU until 2020 so no other member would lose out during the bloc’s current budget round.

She also made clear for the first time that Britain would “honour commitments it has made during the period of our membership”, possibly opening the door to longer-term payments for projects extending well beyond Brexit.

May also made concessions on citizens’ rights, especially on the involvement of the European court of justice. Once again, though, she failed to say what kind of Brexit she wanted – only what kind she didn’t want, namely a high-access but low-control arrangement like Norway’s, or a low-access, high-control deal like Canada’s. Britain’s deal has to be special.

It’s unclear how far her cabinet are united behind all this. Reports suggested the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, had forced her to keep the transition period short and drop the “Norway option” as a post-Brexit possibility.

The view from Europe

The prime minister spoke lyrically (well, as lyrically as May can) about the “shared challenge” that is Brexit, calling on the EU to be “imaginative and realistic” in devising a deal that “works well for everyone”.

Sadly, that’s not the way most Europeans see it. On the continent, where people have largely moved on from Brexit, Britain’s decision to shoot itself in the foot is seen as Britain’s problem. “Be creative,” says the UK. “We have rules,” say the EU.

So Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, called May’s intervention “a step forward” but asked for “concrete implications”. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, called for “further clarification”.

Barnier doubled down on Monday, as the fourth round of Brexit talks got under way in Brussels, demanding “more clarity” and suggesting May’s speech had changed little, certainly on the sequencing of the talks.

We are not going to mix up discussions on debts and discussion on the past commitments. We are not going to mix up those subjects, which are part of an orderly withdrawal, with a discussion of our future relationship.

The EU still needed to see “sufficient progress” on citizens’ rights, the financial settlement and the Irish border before it would discuss future trade, and May’s €20bn (£17.6bn) offer did not mean the UK would be given a transition period, he said.

The EU has to decide whether to have a transitional period and whether it is in its interest. Any transition has to respect the regulatory and financial framework of the single market.

In other words, Europe will decide. There was bad news from Berlin, too, where chancellor Angela Merkel’s expected re-election for a fourth term came with strings attached as as her Christian Democrats shed support and the far-right AfD surged, somewhat spoiling her party.

Brexiters’ hopes that with the election behind her, Merkel might listen to what they consider common sense and push for a favourable deal were always misplaced, of course: Germany’s economic interests lie firmly with the single market.

But her weakened position means that regardless of whether she was so inclined, Merkel will have no time for Brexit. Coalition talks, probably with the pro-business FDP and Greens, could take months, and then she’ll have enough problems of her own.

Meanwhile, back in Westminster

Brexit might be the most pressing and dramatic political issue to face the UK for decades, but you might be forgiven for not noticing if you’d spent the last couple of days at Labour’s annual conference.

Delegates in Brighton did get an address by Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, as part of a session on Brexit and wider international relations, but what they most certainly did not get was a chance to change the party’s policy by having a vote over freedom of movement or long-term membership of the EU’s single market.

These had been among the options potentially up for debate at the conference, but delegates did not vote in sufficient numbers for them, in part after Momentum encouraged its supporters to seek other options.

Why not vote on such a pressing issue? The simple answer is to give the leadership an easier life. Jeremy Corbyn and Starmer are pursuing a Brexit policy based on what could politely be called managed ambiguity – keeping the promises as vague and fluffy as possible while the Conservatives fight like rats in a sack.

After a summer policy tweak, Labour is now committed to staying in the single market (and customs union) during a transition period. Beyond that – well, the official stance is to seek full access to the single market along with curbing free movement, which of course is probably impossible.

Labour’s membership is seen as more pro-EU than Corbyn, and a vote would have pushed the various inconsistencies and divisions into the spotlight. Amid the post-election glow of warm feeling, the members acquiesced. But with a number of MPs – and members – furious at the fudge, this is surely just a reckoning averted.

You should also know:

• EU citizens will not be fingerprinted or need ID cards, Home Office says.
• Credit ratings agency Moody’s downgrades UK’s rating on Brexit worries; Treasury says it is wrong.
• Oscar-winning actor and Brexit critic Colin Firth takes Italian dual nationality.
• IPPR thinktank warns of unskilled workforce crisis if rules for non-EU migrant workers are extended to EU citizens for access to jobs market.
• Extracts from new book reveal senior cabinet ministers considered ousting May after June election.
• Philip Hammond raises fresh doubts about May’s future as Tory leader.
• Bank of England warns of £30bn consumer debt crisis if interest rates rise.
• Britons in the EU plead with May not to throw them “under the Brexit bus”.

Read these

In the Guardian, Matthew d’Ancona says the cabinet is in denial about who really controls Brexit as senior ministers such as Boris Johnson and Philip Hammond fight battles that are not in their power to win:

The Florence speech was meant, at least, to secure a measure of cabinet unity and has failed even in that respect. But the greater absurdity is that senior Tories are now squabbling semi-publicly as though it is they, rather than the EU 27, who will primarily dictate the form, cost and timescale of Brexit.

This is worse than stalemate. It is the politics of delirium, in which in-fighting and delusion have conspired to distract too many senior Tories from the central facts of the case: first, that the terms of the deal will mostly be decided in Brussels; and second, that this government looks weaker by the day, more sickly, more vulnerable, in this age of brutal political volatility, to a truly terrible fate.

In the FT (paywall), the ever-readable Simon Kuper says Brexit is “Britain’s gift to the world”, offering any number of lessons for future generations about how not to go about doing things – lessons that are coming too late for the UK:

The UK is now experimenting on itself for the benefit of humanity. Advanced societies rarely do anything so reckless, which is why the Brexit experiment is so valuable. In between self-poisonings, Brexit keeps producing discoveries that surprise both Leavers and Remainers.

Rafael Behr argues that faced with the serious work and compromise that Brexit requires, the real “saboteurs” are the Tory cabinet fantasists opting for bombast and obstruction instead:

Reality is coming on hard and fast. May’s true allies in confronting it are the people who warned all along that the impact would hurt. But she has a cabinet packed with people who insist that the collision is avoidable.

You can tell them by the Johnsonian way they twist queries about how it is done into rehashed arguments about why it must be done. And she has a party that prefers a game of hunt-the-saboteur to the boring homework of negotiation.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that extricating the UK from EU membership is harder than advertised, but the obstacle to doing it safely is not those who said it shouldn’t be done. That battle was lost last year. The source of sabotage is those Tories who now prefer the idea of Brexit to the real thing.

Tweet of the week

Neat.