When the time came to hoist the white flag, the cabinet’s swashbuckling Brexiters were nowhere to be seen. Instead, it was left to civil servants to hammer out the terms of Britain’s expensive retreat from the EU, settling a divorce bill that could pave the way for a wider exit agreement struck almost entirely on terms demanded by Brussels.
The secretive circumstances of the financial settlement, which were not even officially confirmed by ministers in parliament on Wednesday, are a far cry from the public fanfare that accompanied the start of the Brexit negotiations. When Theresa May invoked article 50 in March, she boasted that it was time to “make our own decisions and our own laws … to take control of the things that matter most to us”.
As the formal talks ground on in the sterile surroundings of the Berlaymont building, the headquarters of the European commission, it became clear that it was Brussels bureaucrats who still called the shots, to the point of vetoing attempts to vary the venue on British turf occasionally.
David Davis, the Brexit secretary, turned up nonetheless for six increasingly tetchy rounds of talks, accompanied by up to 100 British officials at a time and reportedly carrying his documents in a Faraday cage-protected briefcase to prevent electronic snooping. After the final such encounter, which shrunk from a week to a matter of hours, the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, called time and declared that the UK had a fortnight to settle its debts or would miss any chance to give British business some breathing room with a transitional deal.
Faced with such an ultimatum, Charles Grant, the director of the Centre for European Reform, said he believed Britain had little realistic choice but to cave in on money, citizens’ rights and the Irish border if it wanted to get to phase two talks on trade. “It is dressed up as a negotiation, but it’s really been a story of the British taking time to realise that they have got to accept what the EU demands of them,” he said. “The EU is intelligent enough not to pursue this in a humiliating way, but the truth is that we have to accept.”
The final breakthrough did not come via another Davis and Barnier set piece at the Berlaymont. The final two rounds of talks expected before a European council meeting in December have not been scheduled. Instead, it was Olly Robbins, a low profile but ambitious official who left the Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) after falling out with Davis, who appeared to have tied up the final loose ends in private this week, dealing largely with Barnier’s German deputy, Sabine Weyand.
The two have been meeting behind the scenes for months and were formally tasked with leading parallel talks on Ireland, but it was since Robbins moved back to the Cabinet Office that he has been seen in Brussels as a more reliable channel to the prime minister.
One British official said Robbins and a small team of negotiators who report directly to him have been able to straddle No 10 and DExEU, avoiding some of the political tensions that hampered ministerial-level talks.
Meanwhile, the prime minister prepared the ground among her Brexit hardliners in government, first at a subcommittee of the cabinet last week and then a meeting of the full cabinet on Monday. If the final loose ends can be tied up by Robbins and Weyand on Ireland and the role of the European court of justice (ECJ) in protecting citizens’ rights, May is expected to present Britain’s final offer in person to the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, next Monday.
Another source close to the process said: “Davis is less important than he was and the move of Robbins was symptomatic of No 10 being much more in control. Brussels is happy about that. They didn’t have a high regard for Davis. They didn’t think he was a very serious figure, so the fact of his sidelining has gone down well.
“British officials have got their act together and understand what needs to be done, and it’s a question of how quickly or not they can drag their political masters along with them.”
Despite this, Davis maintains a visible presence, sitting confidently on the government frontbench during prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, and his continued leadership of DExEU will be vital in persuading Brexit enthusiasts that May has not sold out in pursuit of a deal at any cost.
Others blame the prime minister for setting an impossible challenge for the Brexit secretary. Speeches at Lancaster House and the 2016 Conservative party conference, drafted by her former adviser Nick Timothy, drew restrictive red lines on issues such as the ECJ that made compromise all but impossible. Britain’s former EU ambassador Sir Ivan Rogers is one of a number of senior officials openly questioning whether May rushed into triggering article 50 and criticising her predecessor David Cameron.
Grant said: “The final outcome was predetermined by Britain’s red lines. Departing the EU has turned out to be very much like accession. It’s called a negotiation, but that is a way of trying to be polite.
“The truth is if you want to join, you join on their terms. You can quibble about the details, but the broad lines are decided by the EU and dressed up as a negotiation. Similarly, when you leave the EU, once you declare your red lines, the ECJ and free movement being two important ones, then the range of opportunities for the future relationship are very limited.”
Liz Truss, the chief secretary to the Treasury, told MPs on Wednesday it was “not in national interest to comment on speculation” about a deal, but insisted that “whatever happens, we are not going to be paying anything like what we would have been as an EU member”.