SHOW me the money.
In the end it will all come down to cash.
After Antonio Tajani, the European Parliament President, this week dismissed the UK’s initial offer of £20 billion as “peanuts,” it came as no surprise that Emmanuel Macron, the French President, suggested that the Brits were “not even halfway there” on the numbers.
Privately, Theresa May was said to have acknowledged that the UK would have to stump up more euros and that officials were poring through issues “line by line” to see what Britain’s finally liability was.
The Prime Minister made clear in her much-vaunted Florence speech that British taxpayers would pay what was due. But when one takes into account EU staff pensions and contributions to infrastructure projects already underway or in the pipeline, then it is easy to see how the billions mount up.
Mr Macron also talked about how talk of a no deal was a “bluff”. It might be. Already we know Amber Rudd, the Remainer Home Secretary, believes such a scenario is “unthinkable”. She is not the only one in Cabinet.
But we are told that on Tuesday David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, will talk up the no-deal scenario, no doubt pointing out how plenty of countries operate under World Trade Organisation rules and, if our European cousins will not play ball, then we will leave the pitch.
But one can imagine how the eyes of certain Cabinet ministers will roll and their lips will be bitten as the leading Brexiteer extols the virtues of the nuclear option.
Already, this week the hard Right campaigners like Owen Paterson, the former Northern Ireland Secretary, have suggested we should just pull the plug now and be done with it; that Britain should not be "terrified" of the no-deal option and that this was "inevitable at the moment; it is an ineluctable certainty we are going to end up with WTO at the end of this anyway".
While it was a no-brainer the trade and transition talks would not start at this week’s EU summit, the warm words from Angela Merkel, in particular, mean they could in December.
Indeed perhaps, they have to. Business leaders are growing louder in their warnings of companies drawing up plans to relocate jobs outside the UK; prudence means they have to plan well ahead.
So come December, the pressure will be really on. Mrs May will be hoping Donald Tusk finally turns into Santa Claus.
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