UK has looked weak in the Brexit talks but Ireland might have been too strong

After all, if you go into a negotiation in which the other side knows that you cannot consider ‘no deal’ then the other side can set the terms of the deal.

It knows that you have no alternative.

This is so obvious that it ought hardly to need to be said.

But it does need to be said because it has been crystal clear for months that the UK is terrified of ‘no deal’ in its negotiations with the EU.

Some parliamentarian opponents of Brexit have been trying to make it impossible for there to be no deal.

No wonder the European Union has been so uncompromising in the talks to date.

Last night two Brexiteers in the Cabinet, Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, and Liam Fox, the Trade Secretary, were stepping up the rhetoric against Brussels and emphasising that Britain was prepared to walk away.

Dr Fox told the BBC: “The prime minister has always said that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed and that no deal would be better than a bad deal, and I think it’s essential as we enter the next phase of the negotiations that the EU understands that and believes it.”

But it is reported that the UK has made minimal preparations for no deal and that it will immediately lead to catastrophic economic and supply problems if there is no deal on March 29, so it seems a bit late in the day to be making these threats.

There was a parallel situation last year, when the DUP seemed so keen to get back to Stormont that you wondered how this sense could anything other than give confidence to Sinn Fein to be tough in talks.

While it is never a good idea to look too keen in a negotiation, nor is a good idea to be overly tough.

It is possible that Sinn Fein has overplayed its hand over the last 18 months, even for a process where it seems to get special dispensation, and it will emerge with less than it might have done had it adopted a more conciliatory approach, and thus not awoken unionist voters as to the detail of the talks.

It is also possible that the Irish government have overplayed their hand in the EU talks.

So far their unbending stance on the Irish border has worked tremendously well for them. Brussels has stuck with Dublin far longer than many people on the UK side thought that they would.

Far-sighted Irish commentators such as Fintan O’Toole warned about this long ago, back in the autumn, well before the December provisional agreement between the EU-UK, in which this problematic backstop emerged.

But things have not yet been tied down to the satisfaction of the Irish Republic in the way that Dublin said they needed to be in March and then now, for the coming EU summit.

From a unionist perspective, the situation is a little less bleak than it seemed a few weeks ago.

The British tactic of kicking things down the road is no doubt dictated by a mixture of panic, indecision and deep divisions in London.

But the talks have not yet collapsed, and it is said that many Brexiteers are now determined just to get it over the line in March 2019, after which — they believe — the public mood will change, in favour of the reality of Brexit.

Ray Bassett, the former Irish diplomat who politely implies that Dublin has indeed overplayed its hand, says that in the final stages of the negotiations it is likely that Germany and France will decide how things pan out, and that Michel Barnier will be sidelined.

Another encouraging thing has happened from a unionist perspective.

On Thursday night the distinguished and highly respected Conservative MP Dominic Grieve was in Belfast. I interviewed him (to be published on Monday) and asked him his thoughts on a border in the Irish Sea.

Mr Grieve is passionately concerned about Brexit but even so, he emphatically ruled out an internal border in the UK — he said that almost none of his colleagues would countenance it.

Somewhat surprisingly, Keir Starmer, the Labour shadow Brexit secretary said something similar when such a border was first mooted, but seems less emphatic now.

However, it is hard to know what to believe in these current chaotic times and I fear that an Irish Sea border could yet suddenly emerge.

• Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter deputy editor

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