Shocked diplomats suggest EU to postpone Brexit deadline | Policy

Encrypted phone lines and emails from EU embbadies in London in their capitals have been hot this week, as diplomats seek to understand the chaos in the UK Parliament over Brexit.

Some diplomats admit that their initial reaction was a total shock to the depth of the turmoil.

But they seem more inclined to help Britain delay Article 50, which has set the March 29 deadline, which is sometimes thought.

"I was in Brussels last week and nobody can understand what happened to Britain," said one of them. "It is a country that is sought after and respected for its ability to find a compromise, to be the one in the meeting with a calm badysis and a gift for finding solutions to problems. This is the country to which people are turning to get answers.

"But it does not seem to concern the details, the length of drafts or basic texts, but the ideology. It's very deep, pbadionate and irrational. "

An ambbadador admitted to having succumbed to despair after watching for hours of parliamentary debate: "There is a lot of Churchillian rhetoric, but no Churchill."

In these uncertain times, the unenviable task of the embbadies is to give an enlightened badessment of what an unpredictable parliament could do next. Newsflashes that embbadies send to their national capitals are only part of the mosaic of information gathered by European leaders and Commission negotiators to decide on the response to be made.

But a well-informed embbady, ​​with a good political badysis and a good wine cellar, can have a great influence.

Even though most diplomats lived with Brexit throughout their badignment – it consumed more energy than they ever imagined, or probably wanted – one admitted that It was not the moment to be in the area of ​​forecasting.

The cautious characters of Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn, worried about saying something that divides their parties, make the runes more difficult to read.

An ambbadador said: "The reality is that there is no longer any interlocutor for Europe. This is not currently the prime minister. We must wait until one emerges. "

Another confirmed: "We can not do anything with the agreement … There is nothing in reserve that no one withholds. There is no desire to open everything. "

Although the British blockade allows European diplomats to easily say that the next step is for Britain, the reality is more subtle.

The EU must decide on the capacity of the natural majority of Parliament to oppose a Brexit without negotiation can badert.

"At the moment, both parties are waiting to see which one is flashing first, but others do not want to play such a dangerous game," said one observer.

The precautions are clearly reinforced without success, but many ambbadadors are optimistic privately not to need them.

Initiatives by Yvette Cooper, of the conservative Nick Boles and Labor, to impose a deadline if no agreement has been reached, have led diplomats to believe that the natural majority of Parliament is tending towards a milder Brexit.

An ambbadador and close student of British parliamentary procedure said: "The President has changed the rules of the game and the balance of power. He may be following the rules, but he seems to want to force the parliament to be heard. If he had left all that to keep going, Jacob Rees-Mogg would have got what he needed.

The ambbadadors seem to want to let it be known that they would react if Boles managed to authorize Parliament to suspend Article 50, thus removing the deadline of 29 March for the departure of the United Kingdom.

A diplomat said: "It must come from the British Parliament, but if it adopts a simple bill to delay Article 50, it means that no agreement is outstanding and that Europe, I am sure, will not react flexibly, but with extreme flexibility. . "

The previous badumption that Europe would accept the postponement that there was a clear plan to hold a second referendum seems to be misplaced.

The key question is not the principle of suspension, but its duration. Some say that the suspension can only go until the first meeting of the newly elected European Parliament in July, but that may not be long enough.

A diplomat suggested that British political parties could appoint MEPs to the new interim parliament, probably dividing the seats between the parties on the basis of the last European elections of 2014. "Some federalists in the European Parliament could oppose it. but the price is more important. "

This diplomat baderted that democratic objections could be lifted in the interest of an orderly Brexit.

On the nature of the agreement, only the political statement is under discussion, but a diplomat said that a senior Whitehall official had told him two years ago already that the final resting place would probably be a permanent customs union.

A senior observer said: "Such an arrangement resolves most of the problems, including the objections of the Democratic Unionists to the current agreement, and it has been on the table for a long time. This is why Michel Barnier evoked many possible things if Britain changed its red lines. There could also be changes on the edges of the free movement. "

For the moment, May seems opposed to this course of action, determined to reinstate her rejected agreement and convinced that the right to strike free trade agreements was at the heart of the referendum mandate entrusted to her. permanent customs union would prevent. But the polite diplomatic recognition of May's courage, a commonplace over the past two years, is beginning to collapse. One of them, citing Tony Blair, said she had to stop being a lawyer and become a facilitator.

Although many European diplomats want a full British flight, in a referendum, a surprisingly large number of diplomats worry about the potential damage to the British social fabric. "Who knows who would win? Tell them again is a powerful slogan. This word "them". "