Brexit: no deal today

By Richard North - December 23, 2020

One can have a little sympathy with the journos covering the EU-UK talks, but only a little. There is very little coming out of the system, and much of what does leak into the open is incomplete or contradictory – or both.

But, when push comes to shove, it all boils down to one thing. Beyond the official statements, they actually know little more than the rest of us. With some hacks, it’s actually less, as their technical knowledge is so slender that they are unable effectively to process the information they are given.

To add to this, of course, there is a great deal of game playing and kite-flying from both sides, so what is being passed to selected media players, directly and indirectly, may be somewhat tainted. And then the journos themselves – and their editors – also have their own agendas.

Yesterday, therefore, we may have been led by the nose to expect some sort of deal by Wednesday, with tales of Johnson and von der Leyen striving to reach an agreement over a telephone hotline set up between Brussels and Whitehall. As far as the narrative went, fishing was very much in the frame as the sides were apparently bartering over national quota allocations and transition periods.

Yet, for all we actually know and can verify, it could have been that the two sides were sitting with their feet up in their respective rooms, watching streamed movies on their laptops, breaking off at intervals to issue coordinated press-releases to a pre-prepared script.

Even if that is unlikely, in precisely those terms, it would not be the first time publicity has been orchestrated to achieve a desired end, with actual events bearing very little relation to what the media were being told.

The reason why this might be the case this time round is that the negotiators do not only have to deal with each other. They also have their own sides to satisfy and, in many respects these are the harder taskmasters. Left to themselves, the negotiators could probably stitch up a deal in a matter of days and complete a hard-copy version in as long as it takes to copy and paste text from previous deals.

Giving in too easily, or too quickly, however, might have the folks back home suspecting that too much has been given away, so it is understandable if the narrative is created of hard-fought talks, poised on a knife-edge, with negotiators at it, hammer and tong, deep into the nights in order to bring back the best possible terms at the last possible minute.

And so it is that we were all hyped up yesterday, ready to expect the best, but schooled to be prepared for the worst, with Barnier trotting out the background clichés to give the events the right amount of gravitas and tension.

Thus, we had the usual Blarney (there must be a French word for that, or a 15-line German version), of the talks entering a “crucial” phase, and even talk, once more, of the final push. It might even have been the final, final push or possibly, by now, the final, final, final push.

To add just the right amount of tension, he gravely informs a bunch of leaky “envoys” that the latest UK fish offer is “unacceptable”, in the certain knowledge that they will be on their mobiles, passing the juicy quote to their favourite hacks before he has even left the room.

Then, to lend colour to events, we are told that Johnson and von der Leyen were in “regular” contact, although the reporters might have meant “frequent”. It depends whether they were trying to convey “very often”, or simply at ten minutes past every hour – although that might mean regular and frequent.

Then, of course, we have the inspired leaks, coming from such events as Barnier giving “closed-door” briefings to MEPs who then immediately blab the contents to any journo who will listen. From this source we thus learnt that “the two sides were still far apart on fish” and Barnier “felt the issue would have to be solved by Ms von der Leyen and Mr Johnson”. How very convenient.

In their wake, we get the pulsating quotes from an anonymous British official, who obligingly opines that “nothing’s impossible”, in between stressing that significant differences remain, before offering the folksy take-home quote that: “Getting home for Christmas is something everyone would like” – even Polish lorry drivers stuck in Kent.

To add an international flavour, we have Micheál Martin, the Irish prime minister, intoning that “a deal was more likely than no-deal, but not necessarily before Christmas”. In a carefully crafted comment, he tells reporters: “The sense I would have is that given the progress that has been made, that I think a deal is more likely than less likely”.

Thus the narrative is firmly lodged, preparing the plebs back home for the inevitable disappointment. The narrative is reinforced by an unattributed observation which has it that both sides are saying that talks could continue after Christmas, but these gallant people “share a desire to close a deal by Wednesday night if at all possible, as exhausted negotiators hand the baton to their political bosses”.

Only later on, however, does the real message start drifting out, carefully released to selected journos to be tweeted into the ether to give maximum impact. In this case, Robert Peston is the instrument of choice, the ITV know-it-all, with enough followers to make the difference. Fed the right words, he breathlessly inform us that ” prospects of a UK/EU deal tomorrow have faded”.

Shortly afterwards, he gets fed the material for a measured “update” which has, “EU officials in the dark as to whether talks will continue beyond Xmas”. Then comes the intended payoff, neatly packaged for the egregious hack:

And it is confirmed there is no chance of a deal before Christmas. But apparently there is still a chance a deal can be agreed in time to be ratified in the UK parliament by 11pm 31 Dec. I am told the talks are now “like a chess game with few pieces left on the board”. Who wins?

Like as not, Peston would probably have no idea whether he was being played, and even if he knew, it’s unlikely that he would care. He’s got his “scoop” which places him at the centre of events, and that’s all that really matters.

Also drifting out is the lonely and forlorn observation that there are other issues which remain to be resolved but, with the focus entirely on fishing, no one really cares at this stage. It can wait until later, for another “exclusive” by a knowing pundit, thence to be ignored by everybody else.

With that safely in the bag, we can then cut to the stand-up comedian, Bertie Ahern, for a bit of light relief. Miles away from the talks and with no inside knowledge, he can keep the home fires burning by injecting a dose of home-spun wisdom.

“Clinching a Brexit deal should be only a matter of time and trade-offs”, he says in one of those all-purpose statements of the bleedin’ obvious that would be quietly ignored if it wasn’t from a prestige source and necessary to add a touch of colour to an otherwise drab report.

Ahern, we are told, now sees London and Brussels reaching a similar finish line in negotiations “as long as Boris doesn’t have any more dinners and makes a mess of it again”. He says that Johnson’s “bluster” plays badly in Brussels, but the British are right to seek a bigger slice of the fish pie.

There we have it, the “chortle” quote that conveys a knowing edge without actually imparting any real information, but it’s enough to feed the prejudices and give a flourish to proceedings.

With the huge emphasis on “new variant” Covid – and talk of a full lockdown from the new year – the French travel ban and the highly photogenic queues of trucks to grace today’s front pages, no one is paying much attention anyway.

But we’re another day closer to the point where MPs and MEPs will be bounced into ratifying a deal with minimal scrutiny or, as the case maybe, setting up the narrative for a “heroic failure” where everyone tried their hardest but it was simply not to be.

If, by then, we’re all under lockdown, it really won’t make a lot of difference either way, as Covid and Brexit merge into a single story, fuelling the soap opera so kindly provided to us by our gifted hacks, while Priti Patel happily chirps that the Johnson government is “ahead of the curve”.

In due course, we’ll be fed the finale, whenever they’ve decided what it’s going to be, and mightily grateful we will be that so many clever people have worked so hard and so long to keep us so well-informed.