With respect - I do not know your experience in major negotiations - I certainly have quite a lot of experience.
Based on that experience I can state that you are describing a number of key principles of negotiation correctly - but really only as if you had recently read them in a ' Negotiation for Dummies' handbook and well out of kilter with practice of how you use those principles in managing negotiations
To be clear - I am referring to the series of handbooks - no barb
A Win - Lose deal is one that quickly ends up in termination and causes enormous dissatisfaction for one party.
The May WA is a massive win for the EU and a massive lose for the UK - so apply your principle to that and wonder how we got here. Barnier saying it is a lose - lose is utter bollocks and that is fucking obvious to anyone not firmly inserted up the EU arse.
They have been facing off against incompetence and have won hands down - of course they will not want to lose any of the hoard of benefits they have been allowed to secure.
It has been said that we will not see movement from the EU unless and until they face the possibility of a walk away option and the political will to use it.
That is another basic negotiation fact
This trade walk - away for trust is just pure sillines. Trust between which parties?
The EU are fronted by professional negotiators - are you saying that we should have confidence to simply 'trust' the other party to look after our interests in negotiations and just hand over all the levers to them. (spoiler - we did and got royally shafted)
Such a promise from the other side is not worth the paper that it is not written on - which is another basic tenet of negotiations.
And frankly Bob - your comments are evidenced as being - at best - inconsistent
Would you advocate that we just 'trust' the US to look after our interests and declare our willingness to accept whatever they draft?, what about China? " Japan? Etc.
You have made a lot of posts saying different
Frankly - what you say is detached from reality.
The WA is a ‘lose’ for the EU as it is a step to removing the U.K. from the EU trading bloc and it is a ‘lose’ for the U.K. for the same reason. The WA deals with three issues one of which, the NI border, is a primary concern for one member state. The EU are not wild about the backstop and view it as a concession to the U.K. If the U.K. can’t live with the backstop then, as Johnson accepts, it is up to the U.K. to come up with an alternative that meets the approval of Brussels and more importantly Dublin.
Everything else is tucked away for us to enjoy a decade or two of future negotiations with the EU.
You pour scorn on May’s comms, messaging and overall strategy of confrontation and shouting at the EU to give us what we want whilst being ground down by the reality of what was available and your take away is not that we embarked on a doomed strategy of confrontation and shouting loudly but that we bent to reality and should have held out for more cake...in a document that only deals with three issues one of which is seen as existential to the island of Ireland and is now deemed non negotiable because Dublin no longer ‘trusts’ Britain to stick by its international commitments under the GFA.
And that lack of trust by Dublin and by the other leaders of the E27 is the final nail in the coffin. We either accept the WA, tarted up with a ribbon and a slap of paint if it helps, or we crash out.
There is nothing of substance left to negotiate. Johnson pledged to not talk to the EU until they dropped the backstop a stance that was met with approval on here, including yours, and yet three weeks later he is hotfooting around to Paris and Berlin with zero movement on the backstop. No one batted an eyelid at this U turn and yet you are still doubling down, or clinging too, this no deal strategy as if it was viable. You think the EU is going to move to accommodate a Govt that no longer has a majority to pass water let alone legislation and when everything it does drives a further wedge between the executive and Parliament?
No one, no matter who you are, is offering compromises to the side that advertises its weaknesses by shutting down Parliament and strengthening domestic opposition.