It's OUT! My latest @ft #Brexit Briefing...so, was last night's disastrous dinner a "Merkel moment" like in 2019...or just the next zombie-like step in the no-deal death-dance in which both sides now seem to be engaged? Mmm.... 1/Thread https://www.ft.com/content/bc7f0bac-978e-48bc-85b3-d56f1838d937

So first, the "Merkel moment" - I'm referring to that "brutally frank" phone call in October 2019 in which the German Chancellor told @BorisJohnson that the EU really wouldn't accept a tech trade border in Ireland - as David Frost has been insisting they would /2

No. 10 reaction furiously, said it was all over etc. BUT when the penny dropped, it also triggered movement - the meeting in the Wirral with @LeoVaradkar and nine days later a deal!

Could something similar happen this time after another brutally frank exchange? /3

Because despite lot of fears in Brussels that @vonderleyen might go soft on EU red lines, she and @MichelBarnier really held the line on the 'free and fair' competition question that - since 2017 - has been EU basis for a zero tariff/zero quota deal. The UK were furious/4

So what now? Does history repeat itself? We'll have to see - there is still time yet - but I'm told that there was/is precious little energy for a deal on either side. That Johnson made clear that the compromises (on those terms) were politically non-viable./5

And this perhaps is where things are different this time - because, as one senior EU diplomat observes wearily, there is "a lack of trust, a lack of energy and a lack of commitment to reach a deal" - even though it is possible to see where a deal can be done. Still /6

The problem is the EU will not move on LPF. It will think creatively on how to sugar the pill, even how work around UK red lines - on say not having an ex ante subsidy regulator - but the net outcome must be the same: an LPF deal. And the UK can't deal with that./7

The EU side complains bitterly that all of the compromises and 'solutions' proposed by the UK are versions of the same thing - a scheme to undercut the EU single market unfairly, which they can't sign up and can't sell to their publics. /8

Which leaves Mr Johnson at a fork in the road. Given the 'heroic' stand he has taken, there remains space, even at the eleventh hour, to “sell” a deal that contains review clauses and cross-cutting governance mechanisms that he can argue leave the UK “sovereign”..../9

Doing the deal would not preclude the UK walking away, or accepting tariffs, at a later date (better than full now, surely?) but the fear is that such a mechanism will always deter divergence. It is the trap Brexiters most fear. /10

And yet that fear itself is an implicit acknowledgment of the EU’s gravitational pull - as @George_Osborne observed last week - it will capture us, however splendid our isolation... /11 https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/brexit-no-deal-brussels-eu-customs-union-b219100.html

But it seems that that reality might just be too much to bear.

Going right back to @BorisJohnson rejection of @theresa_may Chequers plan, the PM has always had an emotional attachment to the clean break, even if it is a kind of economic flat-eartherism. /12

So either Mr Johnson finally acknowledges the gravitational reality, does a deal (with a fishy figleaf probably) and buys himself some space, or he decides for political and ideological reasons, to keep on tilting at the Brussels windmill. /13

So is this a bluff? Not sure, honestly that it is....or that there is enough political will, or momentum on both sides to arrest the slide to a 'no deal'.

Perhaps soon it will be more a question of how to manage it? /14 https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1337102641063735301

To be clear, a WTO-exit, with full tariffs, will put a lot of pressure on the deal that @michaelgove and @MarosSefcovic negotiated this week on the Northern Irish Protocol, but having @JoeBiden in the White House should help to make that work. It must. /15

There are still 21 days to go, however, and the two sides are still talking - tho am told that the dinner didn't exactly "energize" the discussions. Market pressure, back-bench pressure...all perhaps might yet get @BorisJohnson to make deal. It is so obviously there to be done/16

If not, something truly remarkable will have happened. A British government to have consciously, with eyes wide open voluntarily placed itself at a disadvantage with the competitors on its doorstep. Perhaps after a time, we won't notice. We don't live the counterfactual./17

Anyway. Chuck another prawn on the #Brexit barbie, coz right now it looks like we're heading to Australia. ENDS