Brexit part 2: Welcome to the Boris and Ursula show

It is appropriate that the first top-level meeting between the British prime minister and the President of the European Commission in 2020 should be between two new holders of their office. The slate has in effect been wiped clean. Both Theresa May and Jean-Claude Juncker are history. Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen will sit down in Downing Street on Wednesday without the political baggage that so weighed down all previous such encounters since the referendum of 2016.

The likelihood is that the two will get on well. The PM will be at his most charming; von der Leyen will be keen to reset the relationship with Britain that has been so damaged by three-and-a-half years of unalloyed rancour.

That is the good news, and it is not to be underestimated. Johnson know that if he is to make good his boast of a UK at ease with itself and its “friends and neighbours” in Europe, he must first of all dispel the notion of Britain as a rogue state. In the same vein, the Commission President will be keen to show that doing business is best conducted within a framework of trust and mutual best wishes for a successful outcome.

All of this should be accomplished in the first 15 minutes. The pair will presumably exchange continental air kisses and then sit briefly either side of the Number 10 fireplace while the cameras whirr and click, discussing the fact that both of them are Brussels brats, raised as the children of senior EU officials.

It will be in the nitty-gritty of actual discussion (not yet negotiation, we are assured)  that the difficulties will arise. Britain leaves the EU at midnight on January 31, at which point it will become what, in euro-speak, is referred to as a “third” country, neither part of the common structure – Commission, Council, Parliament and Court – nor a member state, with a vote at the table.

Johnson would have us believe that this is in every sense a good thing, liberating the UK from the dead hand of Europe while opening a clear path to global influence and a much-altered pattern of trade.

The reality is that the withdrawal deal, complete with backstop, is only the mid-point of a process that has already taken three years. Most of the hard work remains to be done.

For her part, von der Leyen is convinced that, though both sides will suffer loss as a result of an over-hasty Brexit, by far the greater share will be borne by the British, whom she sees as turning their backs on a single market and customs union within which their economy prospered as the fifth-largest in the world. She will argue that if the UK is to reduce the loss to come it must take the necessary time in which to assemble its long-term trading arrangements. She will seek to impress upon her host that his self-imposed deadline of December 31, by which time the two sides are supposed to have secured and ratified a deal, is hopelessly unrealistic and risks the re-emergence, out of the fog of rhetoric, of the cliff edge that so dogged the premiership of Theresa May.

The Prime Minister will at this point huff and puff. Like Donald Trump, he is a campaigner, not an administrator. There may not be an election to win, but he will be keen to keep patriotic opinion on his side so that after the festivities marking “independence Day,” the Brexit bounce continues at least into 2021.

Nonsense, he will say. Where there’s a will there’s a way – and a bit of pressure never hurt anyone.

The risk is that if he overplays his hand, he could yet pluck defeat from the jaws of victory.

In private, away from the cameras, he must surely know that the German’s position is logical and that 11 months in  which to do and dust a deal is not so much ambitious as fantastical. The EU’s deals with Canada and Japan both took seven years to complete; the so-called Mercosur deal with Latin America was first mooted in the 1990s; EU negotiations with the US – never easy – have stalled in the face of Trump’s America First policy. The idea that the EU is going to bend over backwards to ensure that Johnson can shout “nailed it!” to his party and voters at the end of the year is delusional.

The only two ways in which the PM could hope to meet the deadline would be either to sign off on a deal dictated by Michel Barnier (as happened with the withdrawal deal), or else to crash out on the back of No Deal/WTO solution considered ruinous not only by the bulk of British industry, but by the Treasury and the Bank of England.

We know that the Prime Minister does not consider himself bound by anything so trivial as his word. As evidence of his flexibility in the last ditch, there is his volte-face on the third runway at Heathrow, his climbdown on last October 31 as the “no ifs, not buts” date for Brexit and, not least, his 180-degree about-turn on the Northern Ireland-only Backstop. But while only those ignorant of Johnson’s past would put money on his keeping his promise this time rather than folding at the last second, the risk remains. Ursula von der Leyen knows this and must play her cards accordingly.

The reality, above and beyond the politics of Brexit, is that the Single Market is an established, rules-based entity. You are either in or you are out. There is no middle way. Never mind the golf club analogy, which always cheapened the argument, as though the leaders of the EU were no more than a collection of old buffers in blazers and Britain was the club’s star player –  a maverick with a handicap of -2. The European Union, for all its faults (and it has many), remains the world’s largest trading block, to which we send 45 per cent of our exports and of which we hope to remain the leading banker.

To put that relationship at risk for short-term political gain would be foolhardy in the extreme. How long would the new Tories of the North East stay loyal to the Conservatives if Nissan announced that it was moving production to the Czech Republic? How would voters in Bristol and South Wales feel if Airbus decided to relocate its wing-making facilities to France or Spain? BMW has already moved some of its UK engine production back to Germany. How much more will it switch away in the event of a hard Brexit?

Johnson may feel that with an 80 seat majority behind him at Westminster, he can afford to act tough. Von der Leyen, after all, was only confirmed in her job by a reluctant European Parliament and against the inclination of several of the member states. But the technocrats of Brussels have a limited interest in the vagaries of democracy. Once in situ, the President of the European Commission is almost immovable. Short of a catastrophe, she will be in charge until at least 2025, and quite possibly until 2029.

Michel Barnier, who will also attend the Downing Street meeting, told MEPs last month that he and his team would do everything they could to achieve at least the “vital minimum” during the eleven months of talks starting in February, but added that it would be unrealistic to pretend that a global deal was possible. That, for von der Leyen, will be the starting point of her argument.

On the day of her discussions with the prime minister, the Commission chief is due to give a talk at her UK alma mater, the London School of Economics, with the title, Old Friends, New Beginnings: building another future for the EU-UK partnership. It is unlikely that Johnson will be in the audience, but the text is sure to be scrutinised in advance of the Downing Street meeting, not least by Dominic Cummings. It is always best to know your enemy, never more so than when they come as friends.