Written on Friday Dec 8th:

Early this morning, Friday, December 8, the EU and the UK announced that they had reached terms on the three Article 50 issues which cover: the UK’s ongoing financial obligations to the EU; the rights of EU citizens in the UK; and issues relating to Ireland.

The EU Commission said that the agreement reached was sufficient to allow it to recommend to the EU Council (heads of government) next week that the talks proceed to phase 2, namely discussions on the “framework” of the UK’s future relationship with the EU.

Reading the various documents that have been released today it is hard not to come to the conclusion that the UK appears to have accepted the EU’s terms on all three issue. Outstanding payments from the UK to the EU are not conditional on any sort of future trade deal and will continue long into the future as commitments made by the EU28, of which the UK was a part, fall due. On citizens’ rights the European Court will have a role in defending the rights of EU citizens resident in the UK for eight years after Brexit, a political lifetime. On Ireland, the default position is no hard border.

A long way from the opening UK position when discussions got under way.
What happened during the six months of talks between the Commission and UK Ministers?

Mrs. May appears to have succumbed to what we call the “last kilometre syndrome”. You are not a very experienced runner but, nevertheless, you sign on to run a marathon. Friends advise against it, but you are determined to “take back control” of your life.

Ideally, you should put in the hours training but, as David Davis made clear this week with the impact studies that never were, the UK does not appear to have done much training for this negotiating marathon. You give it your all for the first 15 kilometres, telling yourself that this is not as hard as they told me it would be. Actually, a piece of cake.

Then you hit the wall. Very quickly it gets harder, a lot harder. Each step gets more and more difficult to take. But you keep putting one foot ahead of the other. You round a bend. You can see the finishing line two kilometres or so down the road. But you have nothing left to give. Having invested so much to get to this point, you are damned if you are not going to cross the finishing line. You do what it takes to get yourself there. Shattered.

Negotiations are not much different. You see the finishing line at 03:00 in the morning. Having spent months to get to this point you say to your team: just do it. Finish it. Sign it. We haven’t put in all this effort to fail at the last minute. They’re not asking for that much actually. We’ll sort it out later.

Over the following weeks and months the reality of what you agreed slowly becomes clear. Recriminations mount. What looked good at 03:00 in the morning looks a whole lot different, and worse, in that cold, hard winter sunshine, which show up every speck of dust.

As we see it, that is where the UK is today. Which places questions over whether the deal can hold up as what has been agreed becomes ever clearer. We have our doubts. As the influential Conservative journalist and commentator, Tim Montgomery, tweeted earlier today:

May says there’s been give and take on both sides. Correct. We give the EU extra billions that should be going into the NHS etc and Brussels takes it. This is not a “hard win” deal but surrender. And our capitulation on sequencing means no guarantee of trade deal.

So, where are we in the Brexit process?

As we emphasised in a previous Briefing (No. 23), nothing has changed. The UK will still leave the EU at midnight, Brussels time, March 29, 2019. When you are out, you are out, even if there is a long driveway to walk down before you finally quit the premises. Call it “transition road”.

The UK has asked the EU for a transition period of around two years when it leaves the EU in 2019. The EU is agreeable to this. According to EU Council president, Donald Tusk:

…we should start negotiating the transition period, so that people and businesses have clarity about their situation.”

“As you know, the UK has asked for a transition of about two years, while remaining part of the Single Market and Customs Union. And we will be ready to discuss this, but naturally, we have our conditions. During this period, the UK will respect: the whole of EU law, including new law; it will respect budgetary commitments; it will respect judicial oversight; and of course, all the related obligations…Clearly, within the transition period following the UK’s withdrawal, EU decision-making will continue among the 27-member states, without the UK.”

However, he cautioned, “While being satisfied with today’s agreement […] let us remember that the most difficult challenge is still ahead […] to negotiate a transition arrangement and the framework for our future relationship, we have de facto less than a year.”

What all this means is that, in reality, nothing will change until March 2021, at the earliest. Until then the UK will continue to act as if it were a member of the EU, except it will have no involvement in the EU’s governance processes, no Commissioner, no members of the EU Parliament, no judge on the European Court. All EU laws and regulations will continue to apply in the UK.

During the coming year, 2018, the EU will open talks with the UK on the “framework” of its desired future relationship with the EU after Brexit takes place.

This would be easy if the UK actually knew what it wanted. But it appears it doesn’t. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, admitted this week, since the Brexit vote took place in June 2016 there has been no discussion at cabinet about what future relationship the UK actually wants with the EU.

So, at some point early in 2018 the UK is going to have to tell the EU what it wants. The long-fingered discussion in the cabinet will actually have to take place. The answer will need to be a little bit more precise that we want a “deep, meaningful, special, and everlasting” relationship with the EU.

Those words might work on a Valentines Day card. Not as negotiating objectives. Can the government forge a consensus as to where it actually wants to end up? If it were easy it would have done it before now.

The real detailed discussions between the EU and the UK on the substance of the future relationship will only take place when the UK has left the EU and become a third country, after March 2019. Will a two-year transition period be long enough to agree what needs to be agreed? Probably not.

So, what happens in 2021? Either the UK leaves the EU without a comprehensive trade agreement, delayed hard Brexit, or there is agreement to prolong the transition period, never ending Brexit.

Best guess? Impossible to say. Too far away. As my good friend Denis McShane puts it, Brexit is going to squat like a giant toad on British politics for years and years to come.

Just as you are staggering to your feet having crossed the marathon finishing line, an official says to you: “Think you got it wrong, mate. This is not a marathon. It is a triathlon. There are still two stages to go”.

Now, don’t you wish you had put in those training hours.