While Theresa May brushed off the Frankfurter Allgemeine's account of her disastrous dinner last week with Jean-Claude Juncker as "Brussels gossip", Conservative-supporting newspapers gave free rein to their outrage on Tuesday. For the Sun, "there are vipers more trustworthy than" the European Commission president, "a serial liar" who holds democracy in contempt. A commentator in the Daily Telegraph described the leak as "a brazen power play" worthy of the Kremlin propaganda machine.
In Brussels, however, Juncker's aides were relaxed on Tuesday about the fallout from the leaked details of the dinner, which nobody doubts came from the Berlaymont. For the commission, anything that amplifies the message that the forthcoming Brexit negotiations will be complicated, difficult and at risk of failure is welcome.
If the account of the dinner is accurate, the gulf in understanding between the two sides is alarming and May really is, in Juncker’s words “in a different galaxy”. Details of the negotiating guidelines approved by EU leaders last Saturday were widely known before Wednesday’s dinner at Downing Street.
Those guidelines outline a strict sequence for the negotiations, ruling out any discussion of a post-Brexit trade deal until sufficient progress is made on the divorce terms, including Britain’s financial obligations and the rights of EU citizens in Britain and British citizens in the EU. Although the commission is widely perceived as the most unbending EU institution in its approach to Brexit, the pressure for a tough line on money and the rights of citizens comes from the member states.
Bargained away
Countries such as Poland are adamant that the rights of their citizens in Britain must not be bargained away as part of a comprehensive deal including future trade terms. And big net contributors to the EU budget, such as Germany and the Netherlands, are similarly determined that they should not be stuck with the bill if Britain avoids meeting its full obligations.
If the account of the dinner is accurate, the prime minister thinks Britain is not legally obliged to pay the EU a penny on its way out and that complex arrangements about citizens’ rights can be agreed in a fortnight. She is also reported to have suggested that Britain could leave the single market and then opt into parts of it, as it has been able to do on justice and home affairs policy as an EU member state.
Like Captain Renault hearing about gambling in Casablanca, the prime minister's allies have expressed shock that a politician should leak details of a private meeting. As Nick Clegg pointed out on Tuesday, when May was home secretary her team were Whitehall's reigning masters of the poisonous leak.
Like May, the commission leaks with a purpose, and as one German commentator noted on Tuesday, it is unthinkable that the details of one of Juncker's frequent private dinners with Angela Merkel would find their way into the newspapers. This leak was meant to be heard as a loud siren warning of trouble ahead if the British prime minister remains stranded in a galaxy far away.