The Atlantic reports: It’s been nearly three months, and three rounds, since Brexit negotiations began, and the parties aren’t far from where they started. The European Union’s Chief Brexit Negotiator Michel Barnier closed the last round of negotiations on August 31 by announcing that neither side had made “any decisive progress” on any of the key issues surrounding the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the bloc. His British counterpart, David Davis, was only slightly more optimistic: “We’ve seen some concrete progress. … There remains some way to go.”

Expectations for the third round weren’t high from the start; Barnier opened the talks by admitting: “To be honest, I’m concerned.” The last round, like the one preceding it, aimed at reaching some sort of breakthrough on the three major divorce issues surrounding the U.K.’s exit from the bloc—issues, such as citizens’ rights, the U.K. financial settlement, and the fate of the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, that the EU insists must be addressed before the parties can move on to discussing trade and their future relationship.

It’s a lofty goal, but one both sides anticipated they could reach by October. Now, the EU isn’t so sure. “The current state of progress means we are quite far from being able to say sufficient progress has taken place—not far enough for me to be able to say to the European council that we can start to discuss the future relationship,” Barnier said.

British negotiators have argued that issues like the Irish border are inextricably linked to both sides’ future relationship, and that making progress on one necessitates making progress on the other. The U.K. isn’t exactly wrong, said Steven Peers, a professor of law at the University of Essex. “The sequencing makes things actually technically very awkward,” he told me. “There are things we can’t discuss in advance of knowing what’s going to happen in the future. It’s just not feasible to do that.”

But no resolution doesn’t mean no Brexit, and with the U.K.’s March 2019 exit date from the EU quickly approaching, neither side has the luxury of endlessly debating the timeline—especially if they want to come to an agreement on the three major divorce issues and finalize a trade deal before the two-year negotiating period concludes. So what would happen if no resolution is reached? Jonathan Portes, a professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London and a senior fellow at the independent research institute U.K. in a Changing Europe, told me one possible scenario is a “cliff edge” or hard Brexit, in which both parties resolve the three major divorce issues, but fail to achieve a trade agreement. Failure to do either, he told me, would lead to chaos. [Continue reading…]

Joris Luyendijk writes: As the UK political class zigzags towards the abyss, saying one thing about Brexit today and another thing tomorrow, any illusions in EU capitals that the summer holiday may have brought British MPs to their senses must now be put to rest. Indeed, the daily British displays of hope for a sweet “soft Brexit” deal illustrate not only the tenacity of British self-delusion. More than that, they lay bare a persistent and dangerous ignorance of the internal logic of the EU.

Talk in British media and politics is still too often of the need for a “tough negotiator” who can deliver a great deal for Britain, keeping the benefits of single market membership without any (or many) of the obligations and costs. What is required, so the thinking goes even in most remain circles, is an acceptance on the part of the EU that it is in nobody’s interest to “punish Britain” in order to “discourage other countries from leaving”.

The first problem here is the term “single market”. Brexiteers and remainers alike seem to cling to a 19th-century notion of separate nations making their own products and trading them with other countries. The chief political project is then to lower or ideally abolish tariffs so that the so-called comparative advantages of free trade kick in.

Last week chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier called this view “nostalgic”, and for good reason. The EU is rapidly evolving into something far more ambitious than just a free trade area: it is in the process of becoming one huge economic zone governed by a single set of rules and standards and overseen by a single European court of justice, striking trade deals with the rest of the world and deriving its logic and coherence from the four famous freedoms of goods, capital, services and labour. Products such as cars, computers or aeroplanes are now built from components made in factories and production units scattered across the EU, with employees moving seamlessly between them. For this reason “single economy” is a far better term than “single market”. [Continue reading…]

Andrew Adonis writes: Where there is no vision, the people perish, says the Book of Proverbs. As the slow-motion car crash of Brexit advances, we need a plan for stopping it.

Here goes. Brexit is a revolution which devours its children. Most of those who spawned or supped with it have already vanished (Cameron, Hague, Osborne) or are disappearing beneath the waves (May and the three Brexiteers: Fox, Davis and Johnson).

Month by month in Brussels, David Davis is undergoing the same political evisceration that Theresa May endured during the election campaign.

It has little to do with the cunning Michel Barnier or the crude Jean-Claude Juncker. It is the simple function of an impossible negotiating hand. Britain has been a member of the European Union for 45 years essentially on its own terms. We propose to trade that in for isolation and insularity, while Davis asks for the “exact same benefits” in terms of trade – and no exit bill. Most eight-year-olds have a better grasp of power dynamics.

Davis’s immediate problem is the exit bill. This is being portrayed as a row about figures. But the truth is he does not want to agree any figure. Whatever the number– £20bn or £50bn – he gets flayed by the right and the Mail, and the promise of £350m a month for the NHS on the side of the Leave bus has to be painted over. But if he doesn’t agree a figure, or a mechanism from which one can be calculated, there won’t be any trade deal.

So expect constant threats of walkouts which don’t materialise; though don’t rule out an impulsive Davis resignation on the pretext of being undermined by the prime minister when she, finally, has to agree a figure. These are the immediate rocks ahead, and beyond them are many more. The only question is how much damage Brexit does and how quickly.

However, that doesn’t mean that Brexit will be defeated; and it isn’t a vision of sunlit uplands. To defeat Brexit, two things are essential. [Continue reading…]

Anne Applebaum writes: It is a rare opportunity. Seldom does the voting public have the chance to watch their elected politicians confront very specific false promises in real time. Usually campaign promises are either too vague to be contrasted with reality (“Make America Great Again”) or too long term. By the time that “guaranteed growth” either arrives or doesn’t, the person who said it would happen is long out of office.

But in Britain right now, something different is unfolding. During the referendum last year, politicians advocating their country’s departure from the European Union gave some specific assurances. Some derived from ignorance; as it turned out, few of them really understood how the E.U. works. Others were lies, which they knew to be lies at the time.

Because they didn’t expect to win that campaign, they didn’t expect either their ignorance or their dishonesty to be revealed. But then they won — and now it’s happening.

The most egregious lie was about money. [Continue reading…]

Martin Kettle writes: Those who switched off with a sigh of relief in July may not have noticed. But something big is slowly stirring in the undergrowth of British politics. Fact by fact, announcement by announcement, the case for Britain to remain in the European Union’s single market and customs union is growing stronger and more irresistible by the day. Such an outcome is most definitely not this government’s policy. But, this autumn, something will have to give.

Over the past 10 days David Davis’s Brexit department has published seven so-called partnership papers: important documents covering a wide range of subjects, from customs and Northern Ireland to civil justice and, most recently, disputes mechanisms, including the role of the European Court of Justice. According to the introductory blurb inside each, these papers are all about forming a bespoke post-Brexit partnership with the EU. Yet, by intention or accident, they do something very different. Together they make a case for sticking with the existing partnership as it stands, or at least with its key arrangements, such as the single market and customs union.

In every case, the papers start from the reality of the Brexit vote and then gently proceed to undermine it. None makes the case that Britain should turn its back on the EU, as the Brexiteers would like. None heads off into the fantasy world in which nations, dazzled by British exceptionalism, queue up to make bilateral deals with Liam Fox. Instead, all seek to retain large parts of the cooperation and openness that Europe has given this country. The trajectory has shifted from go-it-alone – sometimes unbelievably so, as in the dogged refusal to recognise that the commitments to leaving the EU and maintaining an open border in Ireland are almost impossible to combine – towards the status quo. [Continue reading…]