And now it’s official. UK Prime Minister Theresa May has confirmed she will be triggering Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty – the formal beginning of Brexit negotiations – in the first quarter of next year. Which prompted an interesting response from Joseph Muscat.

To all the other member states, Muscat’s statement was unexceptional. Given that Brexit will be triggered during Malta’s EU presidency, Muscat simply gave the official EU line: anything the UK negotiates will necessarily have to be less advantageous to it than membership.

In Malta, however, this comes as a belated admission by Muscat. May has said that her government will not be seeking an established alternative to membership – neither the Norwegian nor the Swiss model (the current Swiss model, I should say, since the Swiss have voted to exit from the common labour market). The UK will be seeking to negotiate a new trading partnership.

For Muscat to state categorically that no trading partnership can be as advantageous as EU membership is to admit that what he wanted for Malta 14 years ago was a delusion. To date, all he has publicly admitted (several years after Malta’s accession) is that he had underestimated the advantages of – wait for it – Malta having representatives in the European Parliament.

What a difference the passage of time makes. Today, the European Parliament is dismissed as a talking-shop (after it voted against Leo Brincat) on the blog run by Muscat’s media enforcer, Glenn Bedingfield.

All this is only of passing interest, of course, and only to a small outcrop of the EU. Of far greater interest, as of now, are the three paradoxes that will shape the character of the Brexit negotiations.

The first concerns May’s vulnerability as prime minister. The major Opposition party, Labour, is led by Jeremy Corbyn, who has virtually no chance of winning the next general election. However, it also seems virtually impossible that he is replaced by an internal coup.

Ordinarily, a weak Opposition strengthens a prime minister. But not in this case. Labour’s great weakness is also making May vulnerable to internal Tory challenges.

The weak Opposition makes Tory parliamentary discipline seem less necessary. However, the Tory majority in the Commons is very slim – less than two dozen; indeed, the size of John Major’s slim majority during his troubled years as prime minister in the mid-1990s.

In other words, even a small backbench rebellion would carry a lot of clout, while being able to claim that it’s not risking a Labour government. Bad news for a prime minister.

In fact, backbench sniping against May and her Brexit ministers has already begun – from the pro-European and pro ‘soft Brexit’ side. It is striking how May refused every temptation to criticise David Cameron and his allies in Sunday’s BBC interview with Andrew Marr.

For Muscat to state categorically that no trading partnership can be as advantageous as EU membership is to admit that what he wanted for Malta 14 years ago was a delusion

She needs to keep her party together. For the first time in a generation, the Tory backbench revolt over Europe is being led by the ‘wets’.

Whether, during the course of the Brexit negotiations, she survives the paradox of her weakness is an open question. If Labour becomes a stronger electoral force, she may gain more room for manoeuvre.

The second Brexit paradox concerns the internal politics of other EU member states. It is better known but its implications on domestic EU politics are not often spelled out.

The starting point is the position that Muscat stated: any negotiations must, somehow, leave the UK worse off in its relations with Europe – with whom 50 per cent of UK trade is conducted.

Not just worse off but evidently so. This is vital if moderate European governments are to fend off the challenges of extremist, Euro-sceptic parties of the hard left and hard right. Membership must be seen to pay off so that no one else is tempted.

Here’s the paradox. Although many pundits are rightly saying that the EU holds all the cards in negotiating with the UK, it is still a weak hand. That is, the EU’s negotiating position will be driven by the domestic weaknesses of its member states.

The EU position depends on having no major government mismanaging its domestic politics. It depends on everyone keeping their fingers crossed for the coming votes in Italy and France.

A change of government could change the character of the Brexit negotiations dramatically. Even the threat of a change of government could destabilise negotiations.

Let’s say all goes well. There is a third paradox. EU interests in the Brexit deal split roughly into two: the trading interests of western European states like Germany and the free movement interests of eastern European states, like Poland and Romania.

German trading interests do keep in mind the bigger picture: much as the UK is important for business, a Brexit deal that threatens the very existence of the EU would be more costly in business terms.

If it were simply a matter of keeping together all four classic freedoms – including free movement and free trade – there shouldn’t be a problem. It would be a classic case of European juggling.

But in the current climate, an eastern European alliance is coalescing that is formulating a challenge against – in Hungary’s Viktor Orban’s words - the liberal character of the EU. The ‘liberal EU’ is, of course, just another name for Western Europe.

So here’s the paradox. Brexit negotiations will be conducted by negotiators largely sympathetic to western European trading interests, while trying to satisfy a growing eastern European coalition that is increasingly hostile to the older members.

Perhaps in practice Europe can muddle through. Or maybe eastern Europe will keep the politics of Brexit negotiations cleanly separate from arguments over the EU’s identity. But who would bet on it?

ranierfsadni@europe.com