Seeking a 'strategy' at the heart of the UKs approach to negotiations with the EU is as futile as seeking the UK Mars base. No such thing exists yet, nor will it for some considerable time.
I knew I'd heard the phrase "Essay Crisis Prime Minister" before. The label had been applied to David Cameron, who, while not the first Oxford Educated PM with an 'Humanites' degree, was the first to really behave as if has present life was simply an extension his time at Eton & Brasenose. But while Cameron was a mere dabbler, the current PM has elevated Eton & Oxford (Balliol, in this case) to an art form. [And it is not coincidence that the most energetic Tory PM of modern, perhaps any, times was an experimental chemist. Idle brilliance doesn't cut it in the lab.]
A lot of people have spent a lot of time speculating as to what the UKs plan is, vis-a-vis the ongoing negotiations with the EU. Which, it seems to me, misses the point entirely. There is no plan. Pointing out that delaying makes no negotiation sense -- it strengthens the EUs hand -- is looking for method in the madness. But there is no method. Nor madness. Merely an absence.
The PM hates decisions. He particularly hates doing anything that anyone might not like. He rails against the nanny state, the EU, judges, people telling us what to do. The catastrophic delay to putting in place a legally binding lockdown wasn't part of some wild, neoliberal 'herd immunity programme'. It was the consequence of having a moral coward as PM. He would have excelled in the Cowdrey role in the D'Oliveira affair.
I mean, this is a guy who would rather hide in a fridge than risk being asked a question by a journalist. During a General Election Campaign. When he was seeking the Premiership.
The PM (I refuse to humanise him with his surname, let alone indulge in the purile business of identifying him by his forename) has not decided whether or not we will have a trade deal with the UK before the end of the year. Nor, by his own political strategy -- which has elevated him to PM and won him a stonking great majority -- should he do so. Waiting until the last moment, then jumping whichever way maximises his personal brand has paid dividends, and then some.
The biggest decision taken by any PM since, er, last last-but-one PM -- who decided to call an EU referendum during the biggest downturn in UK living standards in living memory -- will be taken, late in the day, on the basis of what is easy, and what is popular, not what is right.
Meet the new "Essay Crisis" PM, very similar to the old "Essay Crisis" PM. Who, lest we forget, when it came to making the biggest political call in modern British peacetime, opted to shore up his short-term popularity at the expense of 40 years of carefully crafted economic, social and foreign policy.
The PM will do what gets the PM the best, or at least, least-worst headlines the day after he does it. Since we haven't reached, or even got close, to the point that the PM has to make that call, the call has not been made. On the day, he will judge which way the wind is blowing at 3am in the morning, with the essay due by 9am, and make his choice. That is all there is. That is all there ever was.
