Brexit deal possible if everyone involved is rational. Good luck with that

Among the Brexit-mongers around Whitehall, there is disagreement between the small-printers and the big-picture men. The latter are inclined to optimism. Donald Tusk’s body-language was not too bad. Although one could hardly expect the rest of the EU to welcome the UK’s departure, there seemed to be an acknowledgement of the new reality: a willingness to recognise that there is a deal to be done. But the small-printers find poison pills in every syllable. So who will be proved right? To a surprising extent, that may depend on personalities.

If it were merely an attempt to find a rational outcome, there should be no problem. The UK would be delighted if the EU continued to enjoy a substantial trade surplus with us, while the City of London was still the engine-room of the European financial system and Britain played a vital role in European security arrangements. There are two big problems: people and money. Neither is insoluble. Politically, we have to be able to claim to control our own borders. Economically, we need all those Europeans to do the work. God help us if they all went home. As for money, we have a moral responsibility to guarantee the pension arrangements of Brits who work for the EU. Nor can we escape liability for EU projects which we under-wrote. Equally, there may be other EU ventures which we would wish to support on an ad hoc basis. But forget M Barnier’s £60 billion.

Even so, the cost would hardly be less than £20 billion. That is a long way from £350 million a week for the NHS. Moreover, there would still be plenty of Europeans working in this country. Could Mrs May sell such a deal? Would she want to do so? We should have the answers before Christmas, and if there is no agreement, it is off to hard Brexit and the WTO.

Yet if we could sort out money and people, the smaller issues, though innumerable, should be manageable. After all, few of them have much political resonance. It seems inconceivable that the Spanish would be allowed to sabotage an agreement by obstinacy over Gibraltar. There is also a further argument which we could deploy. To put it politely, Schengen and the single currency are works in progress. The early idealism which once impelled them is much depleted. The last thing that the EU needs is a further debilitating row which would drag on and on, consuming energies which could be better employed. That is especially true when it comes to global security. On that, the EU is not solely to blame. Throughout the West, geopolitical thinking has never been more impoverished, beset by a terrifying blend of naïveté and weakness. Although there is no easy solution, this is certainly not the time for the EU to take a bath in its own navel.

That leads on to a further factor. After mentioning security, the May team promptly retreated. Any suggestion that the UK might blackmail the other 27 over European defence: Heaven forbid. But after due respects to Heaven’s decrees, let us hope that the incident was a cunning ploy, not a blunder. In Brussels, determined to ensure a united front, they hate the idea of the UK playing footsie with the Baltics or the Visograd Four. That corrupt and ultimately ineffectual old bruiser Jacques Chirac once told the smaller nations of the EU to shut up. In Brussels or Paris these days, they would not speak like that. They would merely think it. Yet anyone with a minimal grasp of history and geography will have reached an obvious conclusion. Soviet communism is no longer a world-wide mission. Mr Putin’s Russia is an awkward neighbour, not a global menace. It is also a long way from the UK. Russia is no threat to us.

So let us suppose that there is no deal: merely a hard and recriminatory Brexit with some of the continentals gloating over our difficulties and indeed hoping to break up the UK. In those circumstances, would Britain have either the political will or the money to help pay for those ingrates’ defence needs? Of course not.

Then there is Mr Trump. What will he do next? How can we know, when the man himself has no idea. In the EU, that could cut both ways. In Paris, he might be seen as the epitome of Anglo-Saxon barbarism, a further argument for having nothing to do with America’s British satellite. They are unlikely to be talking like that in Warsaw or Budapest. This could help us to win their goodwill, though it would be foolish to conclude that the UK will automatically have good relations with Planet Trump. Certainly, the first round of the beauty contest went well. Mrs May prevailed over Frau Merkel in the Judgment of Donald. But unlike those two Ladies, he is fickle.

Yet there are also signs of a return to normality – or at least, as normal as it is likely to get over the next four years. Messrs Tillerson, Mattis and McMaster are able men. The early signs are that they are working well together. It helps that all of them are rock-jawed patriots, who appear to imbued with and inspired by an ethos of public service. Imagine trying to explain that to Donald Trump. One consequence of this should be a more conventional approach to foreign policy. Early on, it seemed as if the new President might take his views on the EU from Nigel Farage: on Russia, from Mr Putin’s intelligence chief at the Washington Embassy; on Nato, from the average American as defined by Dean Rusk (scratch him, and you find an isolationist). Lately, however, there has been a re-assertion of orthodoxy. On Russia, this means suspicion. On the EU and Nato, there will be exasperation, but tempered by the need to maintain the infrastructure of Western collective security – which has not served us badly.

This could all still change. We are in a period of extraordinary uncertainty. That is why this writer voted tepidly to remain: let the daylight grow a little stronger before taking a leap in the dark. Much more important, that is why a deal on Brexit is in everyone’s interests.

This does not mean that it will happen. The small-printers cannot just be dismissed. There is also one large item: the European Court of Justice (ECJ). If we are to enjoy the maximum amount of free trade in Europe, certain mechanisms are essential. It is important to prevent dumping and protectionism. In many cases it is necessary to harmonise standards. But there are two difficulties. The first is the name. If it were called the European Trade Court, life would be much easier. “Justice” implies a remit going well beyond trade, which is the remit that many governments wish it to have, and many of its officials relish.

It would have made Mrs May’s life easier if we had been able to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, so that its Court had no more jurisdiction in the UK. We are stuck with it for the moment, and it seems extremely unlikely that the others would agree to changing the ECJ’s name. Nor would it be easy for Theresa May to explain that we would still be bound by ECJ rulings, over which we have no control, and that we will still be paying EU-geld. It would be easy to slip between the small print into a big bust- up.

This is where personalities come in, and where the continentals have an advantage. Their political systems enforce negotiation in order to build coalitions. Admittedly, the Tories proved surprisingly adept at that when under the cosh of needs-must (can anyone remember the name of their coalition partner?). But it is second nature on the continent.

It is not second nature to Theresa May. Over six years as Home Secretary, she found it pretty hard to negotiate with Cabinet colleagues and her skills have not improved in No.10. David Davis is another matter. His performance has impressed fellow ministers – and surprised a fair few of them. He is a considerable asset. That is not true of Boris. Despite rebuffs, he remains convinced that he can single-handedly transform the UK’s economic prospects, by exporting the English sense of humour. There are few takers. He is like a joker, in a card-game where jokers do not count. The foreigners look at Theresa May: no lack of seriousness there. Then they look at Boris. So what is he doing in her government? There was a regular refrain in the Asterix and Obelix cartoons: “ils sont fous, ces anglaises.” “Could you imagine him as Margaret Thatcher’s Foreign Secretary?” a French friend enquired. I replied that we live in an era when imagination cannot keep pace with reality. But I agreed that the negotiations could only succeed if prose prevails over fantasy. Could that happen? Nobody knows.