Theresa May and Jean-Claude Juncker were pictured on the steps of Downing Street greeting each other warmly ahead of their working dinner on Brexit last week. The next time Juncker comes for tea, the reception is likely to be somewhat frostier. An account of the meeting suggesting the PM was ‘on another galaxy’ has found its way into the press. May has hit back by calling the account ‘Brussels gossip’. Yet whoever is telling the truth, this acrimonious encounter looks like a sign of things to come.
Jean Claude Juncker is a ‘serial liar’, says the Sun which claims that ‘there are vipers more trustworthy than’ the EU president. It’s ’profoundly depressing’ that Juncker – who is so ’contemptuous of democracy’ – should play any part in these negotiations, the paper says. But like it or not, we’re stuck with him, and there’s a lesson for Theresa May in her encounter in Downing Street last week: ‘never, ever repeat the experience’. It’s clear, the Sun says, that ‘talking to this delusional buffoon is a waste of time’. It isn’t only Juncker who comes in for criticism, however. The Sun also accuses those ‘diehard Remainers’ who ‘gullibly swallowed Juncker’s every last syllable’ of hoping that the PM ‘falls flat on her face’. Some have even said the transcript of May’s encounter with Juncker is damning. ‘For who? Not the PM,’ argues the Sun, which says that it was only ‘damning for the EU’ – an institution that desperately ‘needs Brexit to fail because it is petrified of its own collapse’.
The transcript of May’s bashful dinner with Juncker certainly makes ‘alarming reading’, says the Daily Telegraph in its editorial today. It’s obvious, says the paper, that whatever did unfold around the Downing Street dinner table the events ‘must have informed last Saturday’s talks in Brussels’. Yet for all the bluster, the Telegraph says that it is right that Theresa May is ‘sticking to her guns’ by ‘insisting on what she thought was the EU position – that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed’. Even before these talks started however, the Telegraph says that there was always a ‘danger that the unelected Commission would institutionalise the Brexit process in Brussels’. That is precisely what is now unfolding, with the Commission now ‘armed with a mandate for talks that will be hard to unpick’. So what can Britain do to avoid a repeat of this messy row? The Telegraph suggests that a ‘non-European political figure’ could act as an independent mediator. Without one ‘there is a risk of serious misunderstandings’ that could further dent the UK’s relations with the rest of the EU, the paper concludes.
Over the weekend, the EU set out its guidelines for the upcoming Brexit negotiations. These should ‘remove any doubt about the bruising nature of the negotiation ahead’, says the FT. For those Brits who – in Angela Merkel’s words – ‘harbour ‘illusions’ about the deal available’ after Brexit, it is time for an urgent rethink. Theresa May has talked about sticking up for Britain’s national interest. She should remember that each of the other 27 EU countries will be determined to do the same; after all, the EU’s ‘guiding principle is to “preserve its interests”’ – and even if May wins a landslide on June 8th, that won’t change a bit. Instead, it’s time for Britain to be realistic: ‘the UK cannot sustain the pretence that a trade deal will somehow match the access it enjoys within the single market,’ says the FT. This isn’t the only ‘potential unexploded bomb’ though. A transition deal would inevitably mean that Britain must ‘accept the EU’s continuing oversight’. And May’s timetable of having a trade deal in the bag by 2019 has also been seen as unrealistic by other EU leaders. Yet for all the bluster being talked about Brexit and the idea that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’, one thing is clear, says the FT: ‘Britain would be the bigger loser if a breakdown of talks led to a cliff-edge Brexit’.
Theresa May has made her plans for Brexit clear. The PM wants to pick and choose the bits of the EU which the UK maintains ties with, talk down a Brexit divorce bill – and secure a speedy deal ‘on reciprocal expatriate rights’. ‘It has long been clear that the EU does not see the process in this way at all,’ says the Guardian. This clash of perspectives was on display in Downing Street last week, with the leaked details from the PM’s encounter with Juncker demonstrating ‘how large a distance separates the two galaxies on issues over which Mrs May is telling the voters she can be trusted uniquely’. Whatever you think of Juncker, it’s becoming clear that there ‘genuinely is a mass of very spiky hurdles to overcome’ if a Brexit deal is to be secured. ‘The EU is playing for huge stakes’, says the Guardian, which points out that Brussels will be pursuing a strategy of isolating the Brexit effect’. This means one thing: not ’making things easy for a Britain that may say it wants to be a partner but struggles to behave like one and talks in terms that underestimate difficulties’
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