Brussels
\nBritain\u2019s Prime Minister Theresa May faces a Brexit showdown with frustrated EU leaders on Wednesday with talks on agreeing an orderly break-up at an impasse.<\/p>\n
This week\u2019s summit in Brussels was billed as a \u201cmoment of truth\u201d for negotiations on Britain\u2019s exit from the bloc–but it seems the truth is that the two sides just cannot agree.
\n\u201cTomorrow I am going to ask Prime Minister May whether she has concrete proposals on how to break the impasse,\u201d EU president Donald Tusk declared.<\/p>\n
But May, hemmed in by opponents in her own party and even in her own cabinet, has no such proposals.
\n\u201cThe prime minister set out her position and where she thinks the negotiations are,\u201d a Number 10 spokesman said.<\/p>\n
Even the choreography of Wednesday\u2019s summit opening emphasises British isolation. May will brief her 27 colleagues, then they will leave to discuss Brexit over dinner without her.<\/p>\n
Tusk has made it clear that if May and EU negotiator Michel Barnier do not offer signs of concrete progress towards a draft deal he will not call a November summit to sign it.<\/p>\n
Instead, the whole circus could either be pushed back to December or–formerly seen as taboo–the EU could use the November weekend to meet on preparations for a \u201cno-deal\u201d Brexit.<\/p>\n
Previously, both sides had agreed that Britain crashing out of the Union on March 29 next year with neither a divorce agreement nor a roadmap to future ties would be an economic and diplomatic disaster.<\/p>\n
But, after Britain\u2019s refusal to accept an indefinite legal \u201cbackstop\u201d to prevent the return of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, doubts are mounting.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we are quite close to a no-deal,\u201d warned Konrad Szymanski, the Polish minister for European Affairs after a pre-summit meeting with his European counterparts in Luxembourg.<\/p>\n
Back in Brussels, a stern Tusk said: \u201cWe need something really creative to protect our values, to protect our single market. For this we need a new method of thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Tusk conceded he had \u201cno grounds for optimism\u201d based on a report on Tuesday from Barnier and May\u2019s appearance in parliament on Monday.<\/p>\n
The main disagreement between London and Brussels is on how to keep the Irish border open after Brexit, but May is also fighting with her own MPs, who must ultimately approve the final divorce deal.<\/p>\n
At a three-hour cabinet meeting on Tuesday morning, which included ministers with reservations about her strategy, May said a deal was possible if they all stood together.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m convinced that if we as a government stand together and stand firm, we can achieve this,\u201d she said, according to her spokesman.<\/p>\n
Addressing MPs in the House of Commons on Monday, May had said a deal was \u201cachievable\u201d while sticking to her principles on the Irish border issue.<\/p>\n
But a senior European official said the speech had only underscored for Barnier the uphill struggle he faced to get an agreement.<\/p>\n
To solve the Irish question, Britain has proposed staying aligned to the EU\u2019s customs rules until a wider trade deal can be signed that avoids the need for any frontier checks.<\/p>\n
But her own eurosceptic Conservative MPs are demanding this \u201cbackstop\u201d arrangement be time-limited, something the EU will not accept.<\/p>\n
May said the EU was also insisting on its own \u201cbackstop\u201d in case the London proposal did not work, which would see Northern Ireland alone stay aligned to the customs union and single market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Brussels Britain\u2019s Prime Minister Theresa May faces a Brexit showdown with frustrated EU leaders on Wednesday with talks on agreeing an orderly break-up at an impasse. This week\u2019s summit in Brussels was billed as a \u201cmoment of truth\u201d for negotiations on Britain\u2019s exit from the bloc–but it seems the truth is that the two sides […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44669,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44668"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44670,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44668\/revisions\/44670"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}