The list of things about the European Commission that many people at Westminster don’t understand is long. My favourite is that in quite a lot of the EU, the Commission, regularly accused in Britain of spewing out red tape, has often been accused of wanting to deregulate domestic markets and expose cosy economic arrangements to the bracing winds of “Anglo-Saxon capitalism”.
Today though, what’s more important is this: the Commission understands British politics. Understands it very well, in fact, and sometimes better than people in the Westminster village.
Brexit is a case in point. As soon as the results of last year’s general election results were in, the Commission understood that “hard Brexit” was dead and that Theresa May’s only path led towards the sort of compromises that she set out at Chequers last week. The only questions that remained were how high a price could be extracted from the UK for that deal, and whether or not Mrs May could survive the political compromises involved.
(Incidentally, by suggesting that the Commission team expected last week’s deal I am not imputing some supernatural powers of prediction to them, or otherwise overstating the talents of people in Brussels.
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