Prime Minister Theresa May and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker had “robust” talks Thursday morning, which as promised by European leaders beforehand did nothing to advance the two parties towards a Brexit agreement.
The British leader was pictured giving the top Eurocrat a stern glare as the pair shook hands Thursday morning, a move likely calculated to communicate a business-like attitude to British watchers of the talks.
Nevertheless the negotiations, which were arranged after Britain’s Parliament voted against Theresa May’s deal and asked her to renegotiate, ultimately less resembled a negotiation and more a simple refusal by Europe to budge.
A joint statement issued hours later by the Prime Minister’s office and the European Commission confirmed what several top European figures had already said — that the European Union was not willing to compromise with the United Kingdom and there would be no change to the Brexit deal that Britain could be forced into accepting.
While the wording of the release claimed “the talks were held in a spirit of working together to achieve the UK’s orderly withdrawal from the EU”, it nevertheless underlined that: “the EU27 will not reopen the Withdrawal Agreement, which represents a carefully balanced compromise between the European Union and the UK”.
The lead-up to Thursday has been characterised by several top European figures not only making clear that there would be no movement in their position when Theresa May came to Brussels to ask for a better deal for the United Kingdom, but by insults being directed at Britain by senior figures.
Comments by Donald Tusk Wednesday afternoon were received as being unstatesmanlike even by the standards of Brexit debate, when he told a press conference there was a “special place in hell” for British Brexiteers.
His hateful comment was followed up hours later by ardent Euro-Federalist Guy Verhofstadt, who wrote: “I doubt Lucifer would welcome them, as after what they did to Britain, they would even manage to divide hell.” The Belgian negotiator was once described by a German counterpart as an “ambitious politician who wants to achieve a United States of Europe” and who would work to “punish the British, full stop”.
Breitbart London has reported on the other remarks made by Eurocrats as they rejected any possibility of working with Theresa May, including those of Juncker who said the day before the Prime Minister’s arrival: “…we cannot accept the idea that the withdrawal agreement could be reopened… She knows that the Commission is not prepared to reopen the issue.”
The European Union’s intransigence in the face of the United Kingdom wanting a deal that doesn’t have the potential impact of breaking up the nation and leaving part of it subject to econo9mic and political rule from Brussels should mean that the country is drifting closer to leaving the bloc with no deal in a full, clean Brexit on World Trade Organisation terms (WTO). But Theresa May is desperate to salvage the disadvantageous deal, two years in the making, that earned her the nickname Theresa the Appeaser.
The date for the final vote on her Brexit deal has now been pushed back to the end of February, reports The Daily Telegraph, just a month before the legal Brexit date of March 29th is reached. Leaving this little time between vote and implementation almost certainly means the Prime Minister intends to delay Brexit altogether, reports the paper, a situation already accepted as fact by several senior cabinet ministers.
Oliver JJ Lane is the editor of Breitbart London — Follow him on Twitter and Facebook
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