How the UK lost Brexit battle lodge the EU from its chosen course be- all but disappeared
all but disappeared in both May’s Con-
Tom McTague
The European Union set the train in mo-
tion before the result of the Brexit refer-
endum had even been announced.
It was at 6:22 a.m. on June 24, 2016 — 59
minutes before the official tally was un-
veiled — that the European Council sent
its first “lines to take” to the national
governments that make up the EU.
The United Kingdom was leaving the
European Union and Brussels was de-
termined to seize control of the process.
In the short five-paragraph document
written by Council President Donald
Tusk’s chief of staff, Piotr Serafin, and
circulated among EU ambassadors, the
bloc’s remaining 27 national govern-
ments were urged to speak with one
voice and to insist that the U.K. leave
through the Article 50 process set down
in EU law.
This meant settling the divorce first and
the future relationship second, once the
U.K. had left. “In the future we hope to
have the U.K. as a close partner of the
EU,” the document read. “First we need
to agree the arrangements for the with-
drawal.”
This was crucial. It ran counter to decla-
rations by the U.K.’s victorious Vote
Leave campaign not to be bound by the
formal exit procedure. If the U.K. agreed
to the terms of its departure before its
future relationship was settled, the
Brexit campaigners had argued, it
would deprive itself of much of its lev-
erage.
“Taking back control is a careful change,
not a sudden stop,” read the official
Brexit campaign’s prospectus — en-
dorsed by two of the political leaders of
the campaign, then Justice Secretary Mi-
chael Gove and the former mayor of
London, Boris Johnson. “We will nego-
tiate the terms of a new deal before we
start any legal process to leave.”
It would be the first of many battles the
EU declared, and the first of many it
would win, as it stuck to the strategies it
laid out in the earliest days of the Brexit
process.
Over the 33 months since the referen-
dum, British officials would stage a se-
ries of unsuccessful stands, trying to dis-
fore grudgingly — and often bitterly —
acquiescing amid howls of pain in West-
minster.
British envoys — including Prime Min-
ister Theresa May — would reach out to
national leaders in an attempt to over-
haul Brussels’ legalistic approach with a
diplomatic discussion about mutual in-
terests, flexibility and “imaginative so-
lutions.” They would meet with no suc-
cess.
An attempt to strike side deals on citi-
zens’ rights, an effort to begin talks on
the future relationship before the di-
vorce was settled, a go at starting bilat-
eral discussions with Dublin over the
contentious issue of the Irish border —
none of these would shift the direction
of the talks set forth by the EU in the ear-
liest days.
POLITICO has spoken to dozens of
leading officials, diplomats and politi-
cians in Dublin, Paris, Berlin, Belfast,
London and Brussels — including in
No. 10 Downing Street and chief Brexit
negotiator Michel Barnier’s team in the
European Commission — about the
nearly three years of negotiations.
The story that emerges is of a process in
which the EU moved inexorably for-
ward as Westminster collapsed into po-
litical infighting, indecision and insta-
bility.
The only concession the EU would make
regarding its core principles over the
course of the talks was at the request of
one of its members, the Republic of Ire-
land — and to the disadvantage of the
U.K. The rules of the single market
could be bent, but only for Northern Ire-
land — and only to help the Republic’s
unique problem on the border. For the
U.K., there would be no special deals. In
the words of the EU’s negotiators, there
would be “no cherry-picking.”
As Westminster descends into increas-
ing political turmoil, it has become
highly uncertain whether British Prime
Minister Theresa May will be able to se-
cure parliament’s approval for the
Brexit deal she struck with the EU in No-
vember.
Twenty-nine members of the govern-
ment have resigned over Brexit since
June last year, and party discipline has
servatives and the opposition Labour
Party. The prime minister has suffered a
succession of defeats, including the larg-
est in parliamentary history, when law-
makers rejected her deal first in January
and then again in March. She even
promised to step down once Britain’s di-
vorce from the European Union is seen
through, although she gave no date for
doing so.
With Brexit day postponed, MPs have
voted to take control of the parliamen-
tary timetable to chart a new Brexit
course. Just when and how — and even
if — the U.K. will leave the EU has never
been less clear.
Even if the prime minister does eventu-
ally force her deal through parliament
with grudging Euroskeptic support,
Brexit is far from over. Despite months
of negotiations, many of the key ques-
tions raised by the Brexit vote remain
unanswered. Such is the opposition in
Westminster to the terms on offer, that
leading figures on both sides of the talks
fear that Brexit, far from settling the
U.K.’s place in Europe, will continue to
poison British politics for years to come,
with knock-on effects for Ireland and
the EU.
May’s opponents blame the current cri-
sis on her decision to pursue one inter-
pretation of Brexit, with little real at-
tempt to reach out to MPs on the oppo-
site benches of a hung parliament. But,
as this story reveals, many of the un-
stoppable forces that led to this moment
were set in motion long before the prime
minister took office.
United front
The European Council’s “lines to take”
were the product of months of planning.
Ahead of the Brexit referendum, Tusk
had spoken to every EU leader urging a
united front regardless of the result.
Draft political responses had been
drawn up, ready to go — for either
eventuality: Leave or Remain.
As it became clear what direction the
U.K. had elected to take, the document
was circulated among EU ambassadors
by the European Council — complete
with a typo in the subject line: “PEC
messqges.”
Across Brussels’ gray Rue de la Loi in
the Commission’s Berlaymont building,
President Jean-Claude Juncker and his
then chief of staff, Martin Selmayr, had
worked up an even tighter, technical re-
sponse that would follow shortly after
as a joint statement from the heads of
the four EU institutions.
In days following the referendum, the
EU ratcheted up its position.
The first turn of the screw came at 11:57
a.m. on June 24, 2016, less than five
hours after the result was declared, in
the joint statement drawn up by Juncker
and Selmayr.
Released in the names of Tusk, Juncker,
then European Parliament President
Martin Schulz and Dutch Prime Minis-
ter Mark Rutte, then head of the Council
of the EU’s rotating presidency repre-
senting national governments, the EU
ruled out any talks with Britain before it
triggered Article 50, as required by the
EU treaties.
“We have rules to deal with this in an
orderly way,” the statement read. “Arti-
cle 50 of the Treaty on European Union
sets out the procedure to be followed if
a Member State decides to leave the Eu-
ropean Union. We stand ready to launch
negotiations swiftly.”
The leaders also urged London to trig-
ger Article 50 “as soon as possible” and
declared that the future relationship be-
tween the two sides would only be de-
termined after the U.K. had left. They
also made clear there would be costs for
walking away.
The EU’s thick yellow and blue lines
were set — and formalized by EU am-
bassadors on Sunday, June 26.
Four days later, EU leaders met in Brus-
sels to formalize their position. The
summit — first at 28 with a chastened
British Prime Minister David Cameron
and then at 27 a day later — would set
the tone for the next two years and 10
months.
On Brexit, EU leaders rowed in behind
the heads of the institutions in Brussels,
barely changing the opening positions
drawn up by the Council and Commis-
sion. Only one major change was intro-
duced — a hardening of the EU’s posi-
tion.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel de-
manded that a specific line on the indi-
visibility of the four freedoms — the
movement of goods, services, capital
and people — be included in the final
communiqué.
Cameron had told his fellow leaders at
the summit that immigration had been a
driving factor in the Britain’s decision to
leave, but he hoped the U.K. would stay
close to the single market.
The EU’s conclusions, ruling out the
possibility of carving out the free move-
ment of people from the rest of the sin-
gle market, looked like a rebuff.
National interest
Had London been prepared for Brexit
on June 24, 2016, the negotiations might
have played out differently.
“The British government should have
offered something very, very quickly,”
said one high-ranking official of a large
EU country. “If the U.K. had said:
‘Here’s the plan,’ we might have ac-
cepted it.”
“The British strength was being one
member state, being able to define its
national interest quickly and making its
move quickly,” the official said. “It did
not do that.”
Instead, in the aftermath of the referen-
dum, Cameron resigned as prime min-
ister; Labour MPs attempted to oust
their party’s leader Jeremy Corbyn; Ni-
cola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister,
vowed to hold a second independence
referendum; and Martin McGuinness,
then deputy first minister of Northern
Ireland, called for a vote on whether the
British territory should leave the U.K.
and become part of the Republic of Ire-
land.
The seeds of the crisis Britain faced to-
day were planted by Cameron, said For-
eign Office Minister Alan Duncan. “He
called the referendum too early, ran a
crappy campaign and then walked out,
leaving a vacuum.”
“It is a crisis caused by bad decisions on
top of bad decisions, turning a short-
term gambit into a long-term catastro-
phe,” he added. “You can trace the
whole thing back to the start. The crash
was always coming.”
On the morning after the referendum,
Cameron announced he would be
standing down to allow a new prime
minister to prepare for the negotiation
with the EU. “Above all,” he said “this
will require strong, determined and
committed leadership.”
On July 11, 2016, the Conservative Party
chose Theresa May to replace him.
By selecting May — a former home sec-
retary known for her hard line on immi-
gration — the Tory Party put in place a
prime minister whose personal defini-
tion of Brexit would put her in conflict
with the goals set out by the EU
May began her premiership with a sim-
ple — if enigmatic — definition of leav-
ing the EU: “Brexit means Brexit.” By
her first Tory Party conference as prime
minister in October 2016, she had clari-
fied her position. Brexit meant control-
ling immigration from the EU, shrug-
ging off the jurisdiction of EU courts
and regaining the ability to strike inde-
pendent trade deals.
“We are not leaving the European Un-
ion only to give up control of immigra-
tion all over again,” she said, to the ova-
tion of Tory members. “And we are not
leaving only to return to the jurisdiction
of the European Court of Justice. That’s
not going to happen. We are leaving to
become, once more, a fully sovereign
and independent country.”
She would spell out in a later speech at
Lancaster House in January 2017 that
that also meant leaving the single mar-
ket and the customs union.
If the EU didn’t accept her red lines, “no
deal was better than a bad deal.”
But even as May staked out her position,
she was also making a commitment that
would define the rest of the negotia-
tions.
In the same speech, on the first day of
the Tory Party conference, May reiter-
ated a promise she had made in a news-
paper interview published that morn-
ing: The U.K. would trigger Article 50
before the end of March 2017.
“That duly forfeited at a stroke any lev-
erage over how that process would
run,” said Ivan Rogers, former U.K. am-
bassador to the EU, in a lecture at Liver-
pool University in December 2018.
“And it gave to the 27, who had, by the
morning of June 24th, already set out
their ‘no negotiation without notifica-
tion’ position, the first couple of goals of
the match in the opening five minutes.”
Jonathan Faull, a British former director
general at the European Commission,
who led a task force on the strategic di-
lemmas posed by the U.K.’s EU referen-
dum, agreed: “It was not entirely inevi-
table … but much of what followed
should have been obvious from the way
Article 50 is written and how we know
the EU works.”
For Matthew Elliott, the Vote Leave
campaign’s chief executive, May’s deci-
sion to trigger Article 50 was a defining
moment. “Vote Leave always had a plan
— the key plank of which was not to
trigger Article 50 pre-emptively, but to
instead use the time after the referen-
dum to prepare and plan,” he said. “It is
deeply regrettable that the advice
wasn’t heeded among officials.”
May had planted her flag. The question
was how the EU would react.
Ireland plans
Brussels was not the only European cap-
ital where politicians and civil servants
had been preparing for Brexit.
One adviser on European affairs to a
prominent EU27 leader said Dublin had
begun lobbying other EU countries in
the months before the referendum to en-
sure Ireland was protected in the event
of decision by the U.K. to leave.
“If there is one player which made Ire-
land go to the top of the agenda, it was
Ireland,” the adviser said.
The Irish were pushing on an open door.
EU members were always going to give
priority to the vital interests of a mem-
ber state over those of a country that had
decided to turn its back on the Union —
just as they had sided with Cyprus over
the Turkish Cypriots, despite Brussels’
support for a peace deal for the divided
island that the Turkish Cypriots had ac-
cepted and the Greek Cypriots voted to
reject.
Northern Irish peer Paul Bew, one of the
chief architects of the Good Friday
Agreement, said Dublin’s preparation
was typical of the Irish in their long his-
tory of negotiations with Britain. “They
are on top of the detail, and we [the Brit-
ish] are incurious. The people at the top
of the U.K. government are also para-
lyzed by imperial guilt.”
The contrast with London was stark.
While Cameron refused to allow offi-
cials to prepare for a Leave vote — bar-
ring officials from putting anything on
paper — Ireland had produced a 130-
page Contingency Plan with an hour-
by-hour checklist.
On the morning the referendum result
was announced, then Irish Prime Minis-
ter Enda Kenny made a statement in-
tended to reassure the markets and Irish
citizens. Its central thrust was blunt: Ire-
land would remain a committed mem-
ber of the EU. The point was so im-
portant he repeated it.
“Ireland will, of course, remain a mem-
ber of the European Union,” Kenny de-
clared. “That is profoundly in our na-
tional interest.” His government, he
said, had “prepared to the greatest ex-
tent possible for this eventuality.”
That Ireland, which joined the bloc
along with the U.K. in 1973, felt the need
to reiterate its commitment is illustra-
tive of how the country’s leaders saw
Brexit as an existential threat.
Not only do the two countries share a
lengthy and complex colonial history,
they remain uniquely intertwined. The
two countries share a common travel
area — a mini Schengen — a language,
and of course, a common land border,
one with a violent history quieted by a
delicate peace agreement that Brexit
threatened to unravel.
Hard border
The problem posed by the border be-
tween Northern Ireland and the Repub-
lic of Ireland was evident long before
the U.K. voted to leave.
On June 9, 2016, two weeks before the
referendum, former U.K. Prime Minis-
ters John Major and Tony Blair visited
Northern Ireland to warn that the future
of the union was “on the ballot paper”
and that a Leave vote risked the return
of border controls with the Republic of
Ireland.
The Republic of Ireland and the U.K.
had agreed a common travel area in the
1920s and joined the EU together in
1973. There had never been a moment
when one country was in the EU and the
other not.
And yet, for all its preparations, Dublin
had not come up with a solution.
In Cameron’s statement to the House of
Commons on June 27 he said the British
and Irish governments would start dis-
cussion that week to “work through the
challenges relating to the common bor-
der area.”
In early scoping exercises, according to
“Brexit & Ireland,” by Tony Connelly,
Europe editor at the Irish broadcaster
RTÉ, Dublin had proposed a U.K.-Ire-
land bilateral trade agreement for agri-
culture to avoid the return of a hard bor-
der.
This had been rejected out of hand by
the EU as illegal.
The Anglo-Irish talks went on for
months. Even as May was setting out
her “red lines” at the Tory Party confer-
ence, Irish and British civil servants
were meeting in the Foreign Office in
London for a two-day summit, with
Brexit on the agenda.
These bilateral talks — taking place be-
fore the Brexit negotiations had offi-
cially started — soon caught the atten-
tion of Brussels, where officials were be-
coming concerned.
“From the autumn onwards, they had
their diplomacy on the ground, taking
everyone through the details of the
Good Friday Agreement,” said one sen-
ior EU official intimately involved in the
negotiations. “But there was always a
worry that the Irish were the Brits’ Tro-
jan Horse.”
A few days after May’s speech at the
party conference, Michel Barnier, the
Commission’s chief Brexit negotiator,
arrived in Dublin. The message was
clear: Stop negotiating with the British.
From then on, it would be Brussels that
took on responsibility for the Irish bor-
der.
United front
The appointment of Barnier, a tall,
suave former French minister and two-
time European commissioner, is cred-
ited as one of the primary reasons the
EU was able to maintain a united front
in the face of Brexit.
“As soon as we had found our ‘face,’ it
was a second-rate problem,” explained
one Europe adviser to a major EU27
leader. “This is the main reason the U.K.
was not seen as a threat.”
A second senior official, a sherpa for an
influential EU leader, added: “Brexit is a
lose-lose game. We want to focus on the
future of the Union and let Barnier settle
the accounts of the past.”
That it would be Barnier who would be
tasked with the talks was not obvious
the morning after the referendum. In the
aftermath of the vote, control of the ne-
gotiations was the subject of a turf war
between the EU’s major institutions.
Should it be the Council leading the
talks — or the Commission?
In the end it wasn’t much of competi-
tion. The Council of the EU — the insti-
tution representing national govern-
ments — was the first out of the gate,
with the appointment of the little-
known but well-liked Belgian civil serv-
ant Didier Seeuws to coordinate its re-
sponse. Juncker and Selmayr then laid
their trump card: Barnier.
“The decision to appoint Barnier and to
do so quickly was a big decision,” said
the Europe adviser to a major EU27
leader. “This was a decision taken by
Juncker. I don’t think he saw all the con-
sequences, but it was a very good deci-
sion. Seeuws was a coordinator, not a
leader. We needed a political guy. That
was clever.”
A Frenchman and a member of Merkel’s
center-right European People’s Party,
Barnier had the endorsement of the Ger-
man chancellor and the French presi-
dent. He also knew the U.K. and the City
of London well, having been in charge
of EU financial regulation in the after-
math of the global financial crisis.
“He’s a politician who is reassuring for
France, but is identifiable in Germany,”
the Europe adviser explained. “He’s a
Brussels man, but from a national capi-
tal.”
Most important, he had enough stature
to allow national leaders to step back
from the process.
No matter how hard May and her offi-
cials tried to turn the Brexit talks into a
diplomatic discussion, a negotiation
among equals, Barnier would ensure it
remained an institutional process — be-
tween the U.K. and the much larger EU.
Brexit would be — in the words of Pas-
cal Lamy, a former head of the World
Trade Organization — not a negotiation,
but an “amputation.”
“The Brits always want to make it a po-
litical discussion, but it’s just the reverse
of an accession negotiation,” explained
one EU aide. “It’s not a negotiation. We
unwind EU law in your domestic sys-
tem.”
Even ardent Brexiteers in the U.K.
would come to share this view. In
March 2019, former Conservative Party
leader Iain Duncan Smith would com-
plain bitterly about the way the talks
had gone. “The negotiations up to now
have been less a kind of negotiation and
more of a process which allowed the Eu-
ropean Union to get their way,” he said.
France’s diplomatic establishment
schools its officials in the idea of a “rap-
port de force” — the balance of power in
any relationship. As long as the negoti-
ations remained between Brussels and
London, there would be no question
who had the upper hand.
And that was maintained by controlling
the process. There would be no negotia-
tion without notification, no future rela-
tionship without the divorce agreement,
and no divorce agreement if the money,
citizens’ rights and the problem of the
Irish border weren’t sorted out first.
“The EU, while strategically myopic, is
formidably good at process against ne-
gotiating opponents,” said Rogers. “No
one was paying much attention to how
the EU was patiently constructing the
process designed to maximize its lever-
age.”
At every turn, Barnier pressed home his
advantage, and the U.K. — with little al-
ternative — bowed to the inevitable.
“We don’t need to create rapport de
force. It was there on the day it [Brexit]
was triggered,” was how one French of-
ficial put it.
Upper hand
Nowhere was the imbalance of power
more important than on the Irish bor-
der.
By February, 2017 — before Britain had
even triggered Article 50 — Brussels
had taken ownership of the problem
and come up with the beginnings of a
solution.
In a confidential Brexit note, titled
“Brexit and the Border between Ireland
the U.K.,” the Commission proposed a
soft land border for goods — and no
border controls for agriculture and food.
In effect, the island of Ireland would be
treated as unified when it came to food
and farming. Northern Ireland would
be subject to EU law even after it had
left.
The kicker: This meant there would
have to be border controls within the
U.K. — between Britain and Northern
Ireland.
“Ireland asked for something,” one Eu-
ropean Commission official said. “But
so did the EU: single market integrity in
Northern Ireland.”
According to Connelly’s “Brexit & Ire-
land,” the memo “acknowledged the
sensitivity of this idea,” because of the
fury it would cause among unionists in
Northern Ireland. “As the Commis-
sion’s Irish interlocutors have indi-
cated,” the note stated, “insisting on
such a solution could harm the peace
process.”
But it was the only way under EU law,
the Commission concluded, given the
U.K.’s decision to leave the EU’s cus-
toms union.
The discussion about the border was
part of the EU’s work on its Brexit nego-
tiating “bible,” in preparation for the
U.K.’s official declaration of departure.
It was published, after extensive consul-
tation with national governments, at the
April leaders’ summit shortly after The-
resa May triggered Article 50 on March
29, 2017.
Like a balloon slowly expanded from its
original form, the negotiating guide-
lines were simply a blown-up version of
the statements published by the EU in
the hours after the result was an-
nounced. As the talks dragged on, the
balloon continued to expand but never
substantially changed shape.
There must be a “balance of rights and
obligations” the agreement declared.
“The integrity of the single market must
be preserved, which means the four
freedoms are indivisible and excludes
any cherry-picking,” it read.
Crucially, it also declared there would
be a “phased approach” to the negotia-
tions. Only after the divorce had been
settled could work on the future rela-
tionship begin.
It was exactly what Vote Leave had
feared. Britain would have to agree to
settle its bills and agree to the EU’s solu-
tion to the Irish border before talks
could start on what kind of relationship
would come next. This would deprive
the U.K. of much of its leverage in the
discussion about the future relationship.
“Where we are now has been obvious
for a long time,” said a senior member
of Theresa May’s Downing Street oper-
ation. “By setting up the sequencing like
they did, and putting Northern Ireland
in the first phase, this was always going
to happen. It was their choice, it doesn’t
say anywhere in Article 50 that it had to
be like this.”
Irish wins
Then the EU’s negotiating “bible” was
published in April 2017, Brussels was
still publicly toying with “creative solu-
tions” for the Irish border. It also re-
stricted its commitment to the “aim” of
no hard border between the Republic
and Northern Ireland.
Yet the frenzied Irish diplomacy had al-
ready resulted in three substantial
achievements.
First, Enda Kenny visited the U.K. prime
minister in July 2016, the month that
May took office, and won a public assur-
ance that there would be no return to the
borders of the past.
Second, the border problem had been
put explicitly on Brussels’ agenda — a
top-ticket divorce item that needed to be
resolved before the U.K. could depart.
Third, Dublin had persuaded the EU as
early as April 2017 to confirm that
should Northern Ireland ever reunify
with the Republic it would automati-
cally become a member of the EU.
The British were furious, but the EU had
proved it had Ireland’s back.
In November 2017, after the U.K. had
failed to propose a solution to the Irish
border, the Commission unveiled its
proposal: a “backstop” to ensure that
whatever happened in the future, the
border would remain open.
Barnier’s team had concluded that the
only way to protect the EU single mar-
ket while avoiding a hard border in Ire-
land was for the U.K. to ensure that
there would be “no regulatory diver-
gence” between Northern Ireland and
the rules of the single market and cus-
toms union.
For May, already struggling politically,
the implications were deadly. Doing so
would require one of two painful com-
promises, each of them anathema to po-
litical factions supporting her govern-
ment.
The entirety of the U.K. would have to
abide by EU rules (something hard-line
Brexiteers would never accept), or
Northern Ireland would be subject to
different laws to the rest of the country
(a measure to which the Northern Irish
unionists whose votes she depended on
were sure to object).
Bending the rules
The reaction in London was apoplectic.
The Commission had proposed bending
the rules of the single market to apply
bits of EU law to Northern Ireland, but
not the rest of the U.K.
The proposal was designed to answer
the goals laid out by Brussels and Dub-
lin: to protect the integrity of the single
market and maintain an open border. It
ensured the price for Brexit would be
paid by the British and not the Irish who
otherwise faced the “ghastly choice,” in
the words of one high-ranking EU offi-
cial, of erecting border controls with
Northern Ireland or diluting its mem-
bership of the single market and cus-
toms union.
Olly Robbins, Theresa May’s chief nego-
tiator, travelled to Brussels to complain.
“Among our many arguments was a
key democratic deficit point,” said one
U.K. official who was in the room with
Robbins. “You will leave Northern Ire-
land with no say in the laws governing
it. That is tyranny and will be unsustain-
able.”
But the EU were immovable — and
eventually, in December 2017, the Brit-
ish agreed to the proposal.
In Dublin they could not believe the
U.K. had agreed, one senior EU27 offi-
cial said. “I remember being in a taxi
that Sunday night. We just could not be-
lieve the British had accepted the text.
We knew it would not be acceptable to
the unionists. The truth is, Brexit was al-
ways going to poison the atmosphere
and it has.”
The Irish backstop would remain the
key sticking point for the rest of the ne-
gotiations, even after May convinced
the EU to widen its scope to ensure the
whole of the U.K. remained in the cus-
toms union.
Ultimately, it caused May’s deal to be
rejected in parliament in January 2019
— the largest government defeat ever.
That raised the prospect of the U.K.
crashing out without a deal, plummet-
ing Northern Irish politics further into
crisis.
“There were a number of missteps, but
the two most serious were on the se-
quencing and the language on the back-
stop,” said former Brexit Secretary Da-
vid Davis. “By giving way on the se-
quencing right at the start we broke the
linkage with the future relationship that
was vital. From December 2017 onward
[after the backstop was agreed] it went
from a standard, fairly tough negotia-
tion to a struggle to escape from the po-
sitions [May] fell into.”
One senior Downing Street official said
the U.K. had warned the EU about the
risks the backstop posed domestically,
but felt it had no choice but to agree. “It
didn’t feel like we had much choice, it
felt like it would all fall apart quite
quickly if we didn’t. But that sowed the
seeds for where we are now.”
Asked directly whether the EU knew
what it was getting itself into, one senior
official close to Barnier said: “Oh, we
know what we’re getting ourselves into.
We just have no choice.”
Salzburg reality check
For the U.K., the reality of its position fi-
nally came crashing down in September
2018, at special EU summit in the Aus-
trian town of Salzburg.
On, Wednesday September 19, May’s
most senior advisers were relaxing on a
rooftop hotel bar. The mood was light.
Hopes were high. May was due to ad-
dress EU leaders the following day and
had one-to-one meetings lined up with
key leaders Donald Tusk and Ireland’s
Leo Varadkar.
By lunchtime the next day, the prime
minister — and British diplomacy —
would be publicly humiliated, her best-
laid plan for Brexit rejected.
May had started her tenure riding high
in the polls — the dominant, domineer-
ing figure in British politics. Parliament
was rarely consulted; only because of a
court order did the prime minister seek
the chamber’s consent before triggering
Article 50.
It all went wrong for May after she
called a snap election in the hope of se-
curing the strong majority she would
need to push through whatever deal she
struck with Brussels. The plan back-
fired. In a stunning rebuke, voters
stripped the Conservative Party of its
majority.
As the leader of the largest party, May
remained prime minister, but she be-
came reliant on the votes of the con-
servative Northern Ireland Democratic
Unionist Party, a fiercely pro-union
party that had opposed the 1998 Good
Friday Agreement that brought peace to
the island.
Weakened, May became unable to sof-
ten her red lines — or compromise on
the Irish border — without losing the
support of the hard-line Brexiteers in
her party or the Northern Irish union-
ists. Her red lines kept her in power, but
they made it nearly impossible for her to
strike a deal with the EU.
“She drew bloody red lines which she
has consistently tried to blur after-
wards,” one of the EU’s most senior
Brexit officials told POLITICO shortly
after the deal had been agreed. “It
wasted a lot of time because it made
every single step very painful.”
Forced retreat
As the negotiations dragged on, Britain
was repeatedly forced to retreat. May
would make a stand, only to be forced
to back down as the EU pressed on re-
lentlessly.
Efforts to whittle down Britain’s finan-
cial accounts with the EU were rejected,
until May finally agreed to honor them
in full. Rows over the role of the Euro-
pean Court of Justice protecting EU citi- It would allow the U.K. to avoid a bor-
zens’ rights dragged on. British pride der being erected — on the island of Ire-
was badly piqued when the EU made land or in the Irish Sea. But it was polit-
clear the U.K. would not remain full ically costly. May’s foreign secretary,
partners in EU programs it had once Boris Johnson, and her Brexit secretary,
played a leading role in, such as Galileo,David Davis, both resigned in protest,
European defense or security. The law along with six other junior members of
was the law, and Britain would be a the government.
third country. It was this proposal that May had
British concessions were large and brought to Salzburg, in an attempt to
small. Staff at the U.K. parliamentary break the deadlock by appealing di-
representation in Brussels — UKREP — rectly to EU leaders.
were left exasperated after each visit Doing so was a gamble — and an enor-
from David Davis, May’s first Brexit sec- mous miscalculation. At the leaders’
retary. summit, Donald Tusk quickly dis-
On each occasion, Davis demanded that missed any chance it would be accepted.
they prepare to host the joint press con- The Chequers proposal was “not ac-
ference with him and Barnier on British ceptable” he said. “Especially on the
soil in the city. But every time, despite economic side of it.”
the staff going to great lengths to ensureFrench President Emmanuel Macron
the U.K. could put on a press conference broke with diplomatic niceties, attack-
at the last minute if necessary, Davis al-ing British Brexiteers as “liars” and dis-
ways, eventually, relented to take ques- missing May’s proposal as a “brave
tions in the European Commission. step” that remained “not acceptable.”
“It was every bloody time,” said one “The Chequers plan cannot be take it or
British official. “Every time. And every leave it,” he added.
time we ended up at the Commission.” In Westminster, the episode became
There were other small indignities. Be- known known as the “disaster of Salz-
fore the negotiations started there had burg,” epitomizing months of failure.
been, in London at least, talk of alternat-
“Salzburg was the moment British di-
ing the negotiations between the British plomacy came crashing down,” said one
capital and Brussels. By the end, no U.K. diplomat.
technical talks had taken place in Lon- “It was a big misunderstanding, a big
don. mistake,” agreed the senior adviser to
Officials from both sides often met in an EU leader intimately involved in the
meeting room 201 of the European negotiations.
Commission’s “Charlemagne zone” on Westminster had underestimated the
floor five of the Berlaymont building, EU’s determination to ensure the Brexit
one EU official said. On the side of the talks remained a bureaucratic process —
wall outside the room sits a picture of and not be sucked into political horse-
Conwy Castle in Wales, a building ren- trading with the U.K. “It misread the le-
ovated using EU structural funds — a gal nature of the EU,” one senior French
neat statement of the EU’s position on official said. “This is what makes it
Brexit. strong.”
The British “seemed to think this was
Climbdown the moment it would be taken out of
Barnier’s hands to become a political ne-
The first significant blurring of Theresa gotiation,” the adviser continued. “That
May’s red lines came in December 2017, was the last time the U.K. thought it
with her acceptance of the backstop. could all be sorted out politically.”
Then came May’s Chequers proposal, in
July 2018. For May, the proposal — MPs take control
named after the prime minister’s coun-
try retreat — was a huge climbdown. It I feel like, when people look back at this,
envisioned the whole of the U.K remain- they’ll realize this was the real begin-
ing, to all intents and purposes, in the ning of the end,” texted one member of
EU’s single market for goods. May’s inner circle. It was 10:20 p.m. on
March 25, 2019, and MPs had just voted Should the EU have resisted the tempta-
to begin the process of “indicative tion to press home its overwhelming ad-
votes” on alternative Brexit plans. vantage? Should it have allowed the
With less than three weeks until Brexit U.K. some cherry-picking? Should it
day — already kicked down the road have made Dublin share some of the
into April after parliament had twice costs of Brexit by imposing a border
voted down the deal May struck with with Northern Ireland instead of the
the EU in November — the prime min- backstop?
ister had formally lost control. Many in the U.K. might think so, but
A third vote on her deal had been pulled few in Brussels, Dublin or any other Eu-
because she just did not have the num- ropean capital would agree. “History
bers. will judge,” said the senior official.
For many around May, that a crash Paul Taylor and David Herszenhorn
would come had been obvious for contributed reporting.
months. As far back as July 2018, senior
figures inside No. 10 Downing Street CORRECTION: An earlier version of
had warned that her deal, as it was this article misstated the institution that
shaping up, was unsustainable. There appointed Didier Seeuws as Brexit coor-
was just no way a majority in parlia- dinator.
ment could be assembled for the Brexit
the EU was offering.
In truth, the trains had been set in mo-
tion far earlier — the collision was the
culmination of decisions taken by both
sides within the hours, weeks and
months that followed the referendum.
The EU’s determination not to cut Lon-
don a special deal; Cameron’s decision
to walk away; May’s sweeping promise
not to raise a border in Ireland, while at
the same time drawing incompatible
red lines — something had to give, and
it would not be Brussels.
The result, some of the most senior fig-
ures in Brussels and London admit, is an
outcome in which the negotiations will
have fallen short of their limited ambi-
tions — even if a deal is eventually
forced through a recalcitrant House of
Commons in the coming days or weeks.
The contentious Irish backstop — the
root cause of the crisis — has become so
toxic for the largest party in Northern
Ireland, the DUP, that it risks perma-
nently undermining power-sharing un-
til it is removed and replaced.
Throughout the negotiations, the divi-
sions in Northern Ireland have deep-
ened, and the peace process has been
damaged — as the Commission pre-
dicted in February 2017.
Most important, few of the major ques-
tions created by Britain’s decision to
leave the EU have been answered. “The
big loss is that they have not settled the
question for the future,” one senior offi-
cial close to Barnier admitted.