Theresa May has said she will prove to be 'bloody difficult' when negotiating with Europe. For a woman who wants to play her hand close to her chest this is a remarkable admission to make.
Many is the time I have gone into a negotiation working with a partner and have agreed in advance who is going to play the nice and nasty guy, or the reasonable and unreasonable one. Having a good and bad cop makes sense. One has to make the undeliverable demand. The other has to be the one who reaches out to find the compromise that will, inevitably, form the basis of an agreement. At the end even the bad cop will have been persuaded to come round to the party line. Judging when to do that is another key part of the process.
But, and it's a big but, this requires that the other side do not know in advance who will play which role, especially if the discussion is part of an ongoing debate. Swapping roles is disconcerting, and because there will always be multiple issues in a negotiation, easy to achieve without appearing inconsistent. It leaves the other side guessing. More than that, it allows for flexibility.
But May has now cast herself as the unreasonable person in the Brexit negotiations. It's a role she will find it hard to escape from now she has stated it so publicity. And this then requires that there be a perpetually reasonable person to be beside her, predictably being the compromiser trying to find the solution. Three problems arise.
The first is the tactical error of declaring this to be her role. All surprise is gone.
The second is the fact that she should most often be the compromiser, coming in to solve the irreconcilable positions her more junior negotiators have created for her and looking good in the process. That, after all, is her goal.
The third problem is I simply can't think who the nice guy is in this case.
To describe this as incompetent is to be polite. But I can be the nice guy.
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I find it bizarre and alarming that so many people in UK appear to believe not just that UK is in some kind of “equal” bargaining position with the EU (it is clearly not), but indeed that it has some kind of “advantage”…
Because, well, it’s Britain of course….
Those whom the gods are about to destroy, they first make mad…
Don’t you know they owe us and all that? 1945, you know
Madness
And having just read the piece from the Irish Times posted by Sean Danaher yesterday on the blog, I can do nothing but agree 100% with your judgement of madness.
There’ll be no agreement with the EU because this government have lost touch with reality completely. And that means we are heading for an economic, political and administrative disaster.
And the Brexiteers will refuse to admit any responsibility, as will their followers in the press, and that proportion of the electorate stupid enough to believe them. They’ll seek to blame the EU, and those of us who refuse to go along with their Britnat nonsense.
Arrogance, hubris, then nemesis.
Bad cop. Worse cop.
She might have played the only hand she had against a royal flush.
Because she holds the title ‘Prime Minister’ she is judged as someone who is presumed to have the intellect, experience and leadership qualities to lead a mature nation of over 65.5 million people. GIGO!
Precisely Richard. I would have thought than anyone with any experience of serious negotiation would see May and her teams approach as being guaranteed to end in failure. Whether it’s nice/nasty guy, understanding the other sides perspective, or being realistic about who has the power, May and co demonstrably do not have a clue
You can never win without knowing how to please the other side
There’s no sign they have any awareness of that, at all
I don’t believe May(hem)’s understanding of who’s participating stretches quite as far as Europeans, it seems to begin and end inside her own party. This is the one she supposedly leads but clearly leads her.
For domestic consumption of course the “strong and stable” narrative. To many of us this is a joke (every Tory MP has a chip implanted so they have to say “strong and stable” every 10 seconds) but the Tories are masters planting memes in peoples heads and I understand canvassers from progressive parties are getting this parroted back on the doorstep.
I am deeply worried; the UK is in a very weak position and I sense an increasing frustration in the EU27. In the Negotiations, the EU side could end with the immortal words of O J Cromwell“You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately . . . depart, I say and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”
My feeling is that subtle diplomacy is more likely to work than belligerence and indeed the UK will need a “good cop” but I don’t see one. My faint hope is that after a Tory landslide May will be empowered enough to put Ken Clarke, Anna Soubry or some other sensible pragmatic Tory in the negotiating team. It may be totally false hope, the rhetoric and right wing media frenzy might embolden her to appoint people like Jacob Rees-Mogg or John Redwood instead. (I consistently think things can’t get worse and then they do).
Hopefully it is just posturing; but I get the increasing feeling that May is simply not up to the task. Byzantine complexity does not get anywhere near how difficult the negotiation is going to be and the EU; it could all end in tears.
It will get worse
There will be tears
Thankfully there is also always a dawn
It’s the cost of getting to it that worries me
Euan is spot on. The EU hold all the cards and will determine what kind of deal we get. The notion that the EU will allow us any advantages over the other member states is utterly delusional. It really is time for some hard headed realism.
May’s comments are obviously meant for internal UK consumption, but it’s the kind of idiotic announcement that work against negotiating in a mature and sensible manner. Rather than be bloody difficult one would hope our PM would be diplomatic, thoughtful and persuasive. Some chance of that.
If it wasn’t apparent by now, there surely cannot be much doubt that we are in the hands of fools.
To repeat a comment from a while back, if you assume that May was a hard-line Brexiteer all along, wanting a low tax and regulation Britain, caring nothing for the impact on the majority of the population, then her actions make some sense. She wants a hard Brexit, probably WTO based and will use the inevitably negative responses from the EU to reinforce her case. She has the Mail, Telegraph et al on her side
At least Redwood, Rees-Mogg et al have had the integrity to say what they thought all along.
May wants power and is not powered about the principles
That’s more dangerous
I suspect this is an internal thing based on the ‘strong stable’ disgusting meme with images of wafting Union Jacks and Thatcher 2.00 references. It’s all abstract nonsense and nothing to to with the reality on the ground with soaring private debt, no skill training for our youth, social care crisis, appalling housing situation. I still hold the view (unpopular on this site as it is) that the whole Brexit thing is a displacement activity is a displacement activity to take the searchlight off the real underlying issues of neo-liberalist scorched-earth economics. As far as ‘nice guy’ is concerned there is probably non-one on either side who fits that picture. We have the ghastly May and the EU has a bunch of sleepwalkers blissfully unaware that the economic disasters of the continent that they are instrumental in carrying out are creating fascism. most of the intelligent commentators in France know that the macron win will be the training ground for the Le Pen victory next time.
I do not think Le Pen will ever win
A big part of why the Tories finally got thrown out last time was the tide of sleaze. This bunch of Tories are little better, election funding just being one aspect. Perhaps its time for some serious dirt-digging to attack their credibility.
However, that does needs to be combined with the positive alternative that l and New Labour provided at the time. Current Labour desperately need to learn from that period and that does not mean copying all their policies