MNI INSIGHT: Brexit Deal Chances Vanish As Battlelines Harden

By Kevin Woodfield and David Thomas

     LONDON/BRUSSELS (MNI) - The landing zone for a Brexit deal between the UK

and the European Union has disappeared from view as neither the UK government

nor Brussels cede real ground for compromise, MNI understands.

     UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Brexit deal offer, sent to Brussels

today, is seen as no more than going through the motions. Sources in Brussels,

with an eye to Remainers in the UK parliament, are now placing an 80-90%

probability of the UK leaving the EU without a deal on their growing conviction

that Johnson does not want one.

     Meanwhile, a centrally-placed Brussels source has conceded to MNI that the

so-called Benn Act, designed to stop the government leaving the EU with no deal

on 31 Oct. by extending the deadline, has taken negotiating pressure off

Brussels.

     Binary politics continue to drive the two main combatants in London into

more extreme positions:

     - In the blue corner is the UK government aiming to marginalise Nigel

Farage's Brexit Party.

     - In the red corner a larger crop of MPs, and possibly a parliamentary

majority, for whom a so-called 'soft Brexit' deal, in which the UK would be an

EU rule taker, is in many cases a fig leaf for the larger objective of remaining

in the EU. The EU-27, with Dublin to the fore, have yet to reach the point - if

they ever do - of abandoning the outright 'Remain' cause in the UK.

     --NUMBER 10 STRATEGY

     MNI understands from well-placed sources in both Whitehall and Brussels

that Number 10 is not seriously engaged in seeking a deal.

     They say the UK government has not at any stage acted in earnest with its

non-binding 'non-papers', engagement in 'technical' discussions and now its

suggestion of customs infrastructure away from the internal Irish border to

replace the 'backstop', packaged with continuing EU single market regulatory

membership subject to a Belfast termination mechanism.

     Number 10 has presented itself as willing to do a deal in part to keep the

Cabinet and the wider parliamentary Conservative Party together. But the bigger

motive is to build an election narrative that Prime Minister Boris Johnson and

his team have tried everything to carve out a negotiated departure for the UK

from the EU only to be blocked at every turn by a 'Remainer establishment'.

     --RED LETTER DAY

     The tricky question for Number 10 is how to be sure of securing a November

or early December election and the best way to set it up. There are those who

think Johnson would be prepared to swerve the Benn law and lose, again, in the

Supreme Court to augment his case that he is on the side of the people against

parliament.

     Whatever Number 10's tactics with regards to adding the judiciary to its

list of counter revolutionaries, Johnson is likely to be faced with either

writing an Article 50 extension-seeking letter to Brussels ahead of the Oct. 31

deadline or resigning to allow his opponents to muster an emergency coalition to

secure the extension. If a viable legal dodge exists, it remains locked inside

the Number 10 vault.

     Should Johnson send the letter, it may allow him to choreograph a limited

three-month extension of the UK's EU membership for the explicit purpose of

holding a general election. But even in this course of events, the UK government

could not be sure that the EU would not come back with a proposal, cooked up

with the UK parliament, for a longer extension to retain the option of a second

Brexit referendum.

--MNI London Bureau; +44 203 865 3829; email: jason.webb@marketnews.com

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