Johnson’s Brexit divide-and-rule plan is failing

Wednesday was supposed to be Boris Johnson’s ultimate showdown: A face-to-face meeting with Ursula von der Leyen, boss of the European Commission, to make a once-and-for-all final decision on a Brexit free trade deal with days to go before a Dec. 31 deadline.

It ended up more like every other crunch point in this tortuous saga: Groundhog Day, with a promise to keep negotiating until Sunday. Despite attempts to wrap the talks up with enough of a buffer for parliamentary ratification if there’s a deal — or emergency contingency planning if there isn’t — it’s now clear to everyone that the discussions could really go right up to the end of the transition period on New Year’s Eve.

For the U.K. prime minister in particular, the tete-a-tete’s less than satisfactory outcome drives home that his tactic of trying to split the EU along Franco-German lines isn’t working.

Of course German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron weren’t in the room with Von der Leyen, Johnson and their negotiating teams. They were preparing for a European Union leaders’ summit with a jam-packed agenda including Covid-19. But their presence was keenly felt. As head of the EU’s executive arm, Von der Leyen has the ear of all of the bloc’s 27 members; as former German defense minister, she is on text-message terms with Merkel; and Macron was her key backer for the Commission’s top job last year.

Meanwhile, Johnson has been using every opportunity to send messages over the heads of the Commission’s exhausted negotiators to the German Chancellery and the Elysee Palace. Recent public wrangling over French fishing rights in British waters seemed tailor-made to isolate Macron; and this week, Johnson called for a softer approach to proposed level playing-field rules that might allow for “automatic” retaliation if broken. No U.K. prime minister could accept those, he said. The narrative that France alone is standing in the way of an achievable deal that would save Germany’s export machine 8.2 billion euros ($9.9 billion) in annual losses is one frequently pushed by the Brits.

The problem for Johnson is that nobody’s taking his bait. France’s recent loud threat to veto any unsatisfactory deal has limited the U.K.’s ability to play hardball to win concessions. Merkel, meanwhile, has backed Macron by saying any British proposals that undermine the EU single market — such as unfair regulatory arbitrage — will lead to no deal. Johnson’s previous antics, such as threatening to rewrite the terms of leaving the EU regarding goods crossing the Irish border, haven’t endeared him to the bloc.

Italy’s prime minister told Brussels not to “give a millimeter,” while Spain’s foreign minister called for a deal but “not at any cost.”

What drives this unity is the sense that signing a bad deal with Johnson, who has a reputation for reneging on agreements, could have longer-lasting consequences for the EU single market than the disruption of a no-deal scenario. Obviously, the latter would be messy and painful. After all, the U.K. is the bloc’s third-biggest trading partner. But economic forecasts suggest it would be worse for Britain, and the Europeans feel they’re more in control of the proceedings as a result. The countdown to the only real deadline is building pressure. The EU will publish no-deal contingency measures this week to ensure planes can fly and trucks can drive come Jan. 1, according to Bloomberg News.

Speak to diplomats and officials and there’s increasingly the sense that the EU is comfortable keeping the door open for more talks, all while letting the Brits twist in the wind. There’s little appetite to set ultimatums if they spark a backlash from Johnson’s die-hard Brexiter allies. Despite some recent progress on areas like the treatment of Northern Ireland, fatigue and pessimism are gaining ground. Some say there is only “half an inch” of negotiating room left before crossing EU red lines. Others, perhaps wishfully, point to the lack of panic in the financial markets as proof that failing to reach a deal is a less scary prospect than it used to be.

Believing in a Sunday breakthrough increasingly feels like expecting a Christmas miracle (or, technically, a Hanukkah one). A deal would be in the interests of both sides, but behind Von der Leyen’s polite readout of last night’s dinner, Paris and Berlin actually seem ready for the worst-case scenario. If Johnson wants to avert that, it’s time for him to employ more than charm and bluster.