Chris Grey : As Brexit realities bite, Brexiter fantasies grow
since the outset the government has approached the negotiations
as if it is for the EU to come up with ways of delivering what the UK wants.
The long months in which Britain failed to table proposals is evidence of this, and of something even more problematic:
that the UK couldn’t, and still cannot, agree what it wants.
Instead, all Britain has really done is stated the things it doesn’t want and left it to the EU to fashion a deal consistent with that
– May’s deal - which is now being rejected as it is not what Britain wants!
....
The second misapprehension is that the Brexit negotiations are akin to those over, for example, the various treaties which the UK has taken part in as a continuing member state.
Thus, it is often said, negotiations will go the wire with last minute concessions made and deals done and so it will be with Brexit.
But the dynamics of the Brexit talks are nothing like this at all.
They are not a horse trade amongst 28 countries,
with the possibility of alliances between different groupings,
and with some flexibility on one issue being traded for acceptance of another, in order to get an overall settlement that all want.
Instead, they are a fairly brutal power play between one very large bloc of 27 countries with a fairly united stance on this issue,
and a single country with relatively little (not none, but not that much) leverage
because it will suffer economically far more than most of the 27
.....
If Brexiters think that this means the EU is ‘being nasty’, all that can be said is:
welcome to the real world,
and get ready for those ‘independent trade policy’ talks with the US, China and India, as well as fighting your corner in the WTO.
This is what taking back control looks like.
As Ireland has found, there is, to coin a phrase, power in a union.