Whatever the outcome of the June general election in Britain, the Brexit negotiations will be acrimonious. The next generation of business students and budding politicians will spend endless hours reviewing the process of the negotiation strategies that Britain and the EU will be adopting in the next two years, and possibly beyond that, to strike a new agreement that will define the post-Brexit era.
Business students of my generation may recall the scanty training we received in the art of business negotiations. I remember distinctly the amusing bestseller business book, entitled Everything is Negotiable by Gavin Kennedy, a practical guide on how to negotiate the best deals. The EU and Britain must be honing their negotiating strategies in the next few weeks to create the best chance of achieving their objectives.
The media will speculate on how negotiations will be progressing over the next two years. Emotions will risk blurring the vision of negotiators on both sides of the table. Politicians will often be forced to say one thing in public to appease home audiences, and agree on something quite different to ensure that ultimately they strike a deal that achieves most of their objectives. They should not find a problem doing this as politicians are experts at saying one thing and then doing something quite different.
I believe the EU starts these negotiations with a slight advantage. The Brussels bureaucrats are very experienced in negotiating deals – even if at times their negotiations do not lead to any useful conclusion. Turkey, for instance, has been negotiating to join the EU for over 50 years and it has now reportedly given up.
Trade policy will, whether officially or unofficially, top the agenda. Britain will want to get the best trade deal with the EU despite the fact that British business have generally not supported Brexit. Theresa May is sending delegations to every corner of the world to prove that bilateral agreements are still doable when Britain leaves the EU. But today’s world is dominated by trade super-powers. There are 318 million consumers in the US and 437 million in the EU single market while the UK has just 67 million consumers.
To succeed in striking a good trade deal the UK needs to rope in the same business leaders that opposed Brexit
Replacing agreements between trade superpowers with bilateral agreements with Commonwealth and other countries is likely to be the most important challenge for Britain in the next few years. So even though not admitting it publicly, the British Prime Minister will have to struggle to avoid agreements that depend on concessions from the UK, for example of the free movement of people in the post-Brexit period. It is, after all, businesses that create real sustainable jobs and not politicians.
To succeed in striking a good trade deal the UK needs to rope in the same business leaders that opposed Brexit.
The EU has equally challenging tasks ahead of these negotiations. A final Brexit treaty will have to be approved by a complex process that sees the European Parliament and the European Council trying to achieve some form of consensus amongst 27 member states who have very different domestic objectives. The EU’s complex voting process defies any attempt to bring these negotiations to a quick end as both parties would prefer.
Yet the biggest risk that these negotiations face is one or both parties deciding to walk away from the negotiating table at a time when no deal is perceived to be better than a bad deal. Political moods may change in both the EU and the UK. Britain is still almost equally divided on the issue of leaving the EU.
If the British economy starts to suffer in the coming two years, the electorate may blame political uncertainty caused by the Brexit decision. The effect of thousands of non-British workers leaving the National Health Service or UK companies setting up their head offices in EU countries is enough to send shivers down the spine of the UK establishment.
The EU’s political instability is no less troublesome despite the bullish declarations of EU leaders when they meet for their regular jamborees. It is clear that the interests of major EU members like Germany and France are very different from those of Hungary, Greece and Poland.
Ultimately, it will be Germany and France that call the shots. But if the agreement is not backed by a broad majority of member states, the UK may well decide on a hard Brexit ‘pure and simple’.
johncassarwhite@yahoo.com