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Friday 31 March 2017

EU talks gamesmanship - bluff and spin

One can usually tell when a journo has been royally fed the official line. Con Coughlin's MOD lunches are marked by subsequent pieces of strong, coherent journalism pushing a risibly absurd line that defies all logic. Which probably seems really convincing until the cold light of the following morning.

All the EU's planted stories so far on the Brexit talks have been models of Teutonic coherence. One can almost hear the machine-gun rattle of the press officer listing out the points at the journo's winking recorder. And once they actually realised that the UK really will walk away from a bad deal, the focus of their press manipulation has been pushing the line that our hopes are unrealistic, and that our only option is to take our punishment for the good of the 27. Only it must never be called punishment. 

The best example this morning is a piece in Der Spiegel. The author doesn't even bother to hint at those hedging prevarications that a news story usually contains. Nope. This is pure gamesmanship - using the only weapons the EU can muster, bluff, threat and spin. 

Whenever I've gone into negotiations with an unassailably strong position, the very last thing I've done is to crow about it to the other side. In fact, you rather hope the other side doesn't realise quite how strong your position is - if you want a deal, that is. So why is Spiegel, parotting the official line, crowing so loudly? Unless it's all tommyrot. And everything else we hear from the EU side suggests they're living in La-la land, hoping that bluff, spin and bullying will scare the UK into doing as we're told. They really don't know us, do they?

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Chorus: Fuck 'em all!

Fuck 'em all!
The daego and the croat and the Gaul;
Fuck all the germans and eyeties them too
Fuck all the kermits and their bastard sons;
For we're saying goodbye to them all,
As up the Merkels arse they crawl;
You'll get no agreement this side of the channel,
So cheer up my lads, fuck 'em all!

DeeDee99 said...

They know the Brits can't be bullied.

The bluff, spin and bullying is being done as loudly as possible to deter the populations of any other captive nation from getting uppity about ideas of Sovereignty, independence and freedom.

Anonymous said...

What has shocked me about this whole Brexit process and is just how divorced from the harsher realities of life swathes of our society has become.
They appear to be shocked that other groups have their own agendas and that there is risk of failure attached to any process.
From Junkers, to Merkel and Sturgeon, how can it be that they might kick up a fuss to get their own way? Or, in fact, they might want what we have and may not be completely honest with us?

Add to that the news lite of the cash strapped media and the insular social nature of our arts degree metropolitans and you have what must seem to them to be a perfect storm. It is no wonder that our new establishment is so piss poor at running projects, spending our money wisely or negotiating with Johnny Foreigner. They really don't understand how to negotiate or get what you want.
I can only think this cotton wool life experience explains why so many educated people are so completely terrified of leaving a flawed and failing political club that they never gave a thought to until now.
I thought we all knew that life is not like Star Trek ( Where are the toilets on the Enterprise?)
Apparently not though......

Anonymous said...

I wish I was as confident as you.

Mrs May and Mr Davis, by their reported utterances, seem to be dithering and swithering and thus fuel the negative feeding frenzy of the remainders and MSM. Mrs May is so canny she appears shifty, avoiding issues, Mr Davis hints that the big issues are all in the negotiations, indicating that compromise is on the cards.

"Access to the single market" could be EEA (Switzerland), EFTA (Norway), multiple bilateral agreements (USA), WTO or a negotiated FTA (Canada). I am not advocating that the negotiation should happen in public, nor that our negotiating stance be made public, just that our politicians by their words are not filling me with confidence.

As regards Clegg and the £50 Billion "bar bill" by his argument (which I don't share) wether we leave or not we will pay this 50 billion so we should stay but never points out that if we stay we will continue to be bled for eternity. I hope this bar bill has been added to our red lines, if it is tabled walk away, once you start to discuss it you are just haggling over the amount.

rapscallion said...

Love the song Anonymous :-)

Firstly Radders, you know full well that the idiot Con Coughlin is a cushion - he merely provides the shape of the last arse that sat on him.

Secondly, politics is about the art of the possible. This is something that Richard North and Pete North miss. So taken up and embroiled with EU rules, regulations and what not that they cannot see the these rules can be casually junked when the need arises. The EU has form on this front with the bail outs. Ultimately a deal will be struck, they'll have to give a bit and so will we. It's how it usually works out. If the EU insist on not giving an inch then they will not only look bad but lose out in the long run.

Thirdly, threatening or bullying behaviour is always counter-productive and especially so in the case of a German run EU against Britain. Don't these idiots ever study their history FFS! If this is being done to avoid other satrapy's within the EU considering their version of Brexit, then all I can say is that most of them will see what has happened after 2 years or less and not at the beginning.

It can't be repeated enough. No deal is better than a bad deal.

Mr Ecks said...



They certainly don't know US but they may indeed of the measure of the cowardly cucks who are BluLabour.

Sobers said...

It was instructive that the German Defence Minister was on Newsnight last night declaring that security issues could not be included in the negotiations. Which is odd, because as far as I understood one side doesn't get to decide what the other side uses as bargaining chips. But it is indicative that they're rattled about it.

leila said...

If a couple of EU banks fail eg Deutsche, with 56T in derivatives and Monte Dei Paschi, asking for a 20B Italian bailout, 50/60B to escape the ensuing fiasco may be cheap. However with the costs of the HS2, Trident and a possible nuclear power plant plus a deficit being added to daily I cannot imagine how the clowns will manage the arithmetic.

Bill Quango MP said...

I don't follow Clegg's bar bill argument. He suggests that we've been getting free drinks at the bar EU for 40 years and now we must settle up our tab.

But, since the day we wondered in we have been putting money in the pot. More than anyone else except the Germans. And we've been drinking lemonade. While most of the other 27 have been on cognac and champagne.

Clegg says its a shared bill. For all the drinks we have had together.
No. It isn't. Its for all the drinks they want to have in the future at our expense.

Poisonedchalice said...

This just demonstrates that they never really likes us or thought of us as equal partners in the first place.

That aside, the deal won't be done by politicians, it will be done by business leaders who want to retain bilateral trade. Feckin obvious innit!

Anonymous said...

The strongest bargaining position, especially in the light of the 'divorce first, trade afterwards' position, is to say that we've moved out, so they can't have our money. It's their law that says the trade negotiations have to be completed in 2 years. At least in 2019 we'd be £24B in hand.

Budgie said...

"They really don't know us, do they?" Come on Raedwald that is hope over reality. I have 44 years of evidence of UK capitulation on my side of the argument. It's not "us" doing the negotiating.

The absurd £50 billion claim should have laughed at the first time it surfaced. It wasn't. The government (civil service) look to me as though they are petrified, and will therefore compromise the first time the EU says "boo". Compromise on a trade deal is bad enough, but potentially reversible over time. Compromise over our independence will be devastating.

Anonymous said...

I don't wish to sound rude but from where I'm standing the Brussels mafia appear to be bricking it. I mean look at Tusk's demeanour, addressing the media after the A50 letter was handed him? They still don't get that we're leaving. The UK has a £70 billion trade deficit with the EU so under WTO rules we would make a tidy profit if we chose that route. Fuck 'em.

Off topic but Fallon has not ruled out cuts to 3 Commando Brigade.

Meanwhile those two white elephants anchored in Portsmouth awaiting aircraft are getting more expensive by hour: the cost of the Royal Navy's new F35 Lightning II's has jumped £850 million. And we've just sent an armoured battalion to Estonia to frighten Russia's 3 Divisions in the area. You couln't make it up.

Steve

Dioclese said...

Personally, I just love the way the remoaner politicos are all jumping up and down condemning the terms of our exit when nobody actually knows what they are yet...!

Smoking scot said...

And Spain wants a final say on the future of Gibraltar.

Argentina's making purring noises about the Falklands ('cos their main export - seafood - goes to the EU).

And if they don't mind fire to frying pan, Ireland (north) can go join Ireland (south).

Oh and Cyprus wants a revised deal on the two British bases on its territory.

Opportunism, big time.

Anonymous said...

Bill Quango MP: "He suggests that we've been getting free drinks at the bar EU for 40 years and now we must settle up our tab."

What he means but doesn't want to say out loud is that the likes of Clegg, Mandleson, Kinnock, Kinnock harridan, Kinnock spawn, Clarke et al. have been getting free drinks at the EU bar for 40 years, and now they want *us* to cough up to make sure the freebies continue indefinitely for them.