Just reading an article in which Barnier comments on the upcoming negotiations, brought home to me how docile May/Robbins were in allowing the EU to set out the process and order for negotiations last time. They will surely seek to do that again and the extent to which they are successful should provide some early sight of how resolute the UK are going to be this time. Our stance should also indicate the extent to which the UK will start to mobilise the prospect of No-Deal as a fallback position.
As an observer of the negotiations it is interesting to see the pre-negotiating positioning statements - and the fact that they are emerging from the senior EU representatives is telling.
Barnier seeks to emphasise the 'enormity' of the task: ".....the UK will "automatically, mechanically, legally, leave 600 international agreements". We will have, together – EU and UK, and the UK for its part, alone – to rebuild everything, he says. "That is what is at stake for the next stage of the negotiations".
He then sets out the scope of what is to be covered: "...."a partnership that goes well beyond trade and is unprecedented in scope: covering everything from services and fisheries, to climate action, energy, transport, space, security and defence". But then he concedes that this is "a huge agenda". We simply cannot expect to agree on every single aspect of this new partnership in under a year, he says." and I expect that his team are now very actively preparing the 'prioritisation' of these areas to ensure that those of greatest importance to the UK are 'appropriately' behind those that the EU sees as the priorities.
I would expect this to be the initial important engagement and whilst we should be able to gauge the strengths of the 2 parties and increasingly the likely outcome, I hope that this is not the case as I hope that the UK does not let itself get involved with the public positioning statements that has been the EU's style throughout. In the past this has worked for the EU as their every aspect of doom-mongering has been seized upon by their sycophants at Westminster and social media to trumpet the omnipotence of the EU and demean the UK. Those days where the EU could, via its proxies, control the UK's negotiating positions has now been swept aside and it will be interesting to see if the EU's negotiating team have reconciled themselves to the implications of this change. Equally it will be important to see if the UK representatives are people that can effectively utilise the opportunity that results from the UK having been liberated from the constraints that evidenced Westminster's previous willingness to deliberately damage the UK's negotiating position.
This article starts to bring out where the approaches to negotiations and priorities of the 2 parties will differ - as I say - I find it interesting that Barnier continues to make these public pronouncements at this stage. Fuck - I really hope that Johnson has assembled the right team...…..
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