Three Mistakes The U.K. Government Made In The Brexit Negotiations

The government has failed to deliver a decisive outcome, leaving all sides of the barricade, the Brexiters, Remainers as well as the EU, unsatisfied and frustrated. 

So where has the U.K. government gone wrong?

Mistake 1: Self-imposed pressure

The first major stumble on the part of the U.K. can be traced to the very beginning of the negotiations. On March 29, 2017 the U.K. invoked Article 50 and started the two-year countdown towards Brexit. One month later, the EU agreed its negotiating guidelines and decided to pursue the negotiations in two phases.

The EU had nothing to lose by sticking to the proposed sequence of events. The U.K., for its part, clearly underestimated the complexity of the negotiations–time-wise as well as politically. Left with no other choice, the U.K. Prime Minister proposed in September 2017 a transition period de facto postponing the country’s full Brexit.

Mistake 2: Bad deal better than no deal?

It is a paradox of any successful negotiation. But it was a paradox, which was not understood or utilized by the U.K. In fact, the U.K. government was doing everything possible, despite its rhetoric, to underline that it was not actively preparing for the possibility of no-deal Brexit. The consequence of this was the sub-optimal Withdrawal Agreement agreed between the government and the EU and the lack of flexibility on the part of Brussels once it became obvious this agreement would not be approved by the U.K. Parliament. The U.K. was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Mistake 3: Playing two-dimensional chess on a three-dimensional checkerboard

Any negotiation that cuts across institutions, countries, as well as political lines, is bound to be complicated. A more robust approach towards the EU and more empathy with domestic audience and politics would have been needed.

As a result, the U.K. would have had, at the very least, a better chance of avoiding becoming the victim of its own indecision–an indecision that has resulted not only in the U.K.’s ineptitude to implement what it wants, but worse still, in the country becoming unsure of what it wants in the first place.