Brexit is back and in time for another Christmas of fraught negotiations over Northern Ireland

The European Commission vice president’s statement that he would be ‘very happy if we can start the new year with new agreements in place’ will have made hearts sink, writes Andrew Woodcock

European Commission vice president Maros Sefcovic addresses a news conference about a package of measures designed to ease the flow of goods from Britain to Northern Ireland (Reuters)

For Brexit-watchers, this week has been a severe case of deja vu.

After five long and weary years, we thought that – if it achieved little else of value – Boris Johnson’s withdrawal deal had at least knocked firmly on the head all future debate about level playing fields and governance arrangements and maximally-facilitated border checks.

And yet, here we are again with negotiations on the Northern Ireland protocol restarting and officials already looking down the barrel of a second Christmas in succession being wrecked by last-minute wrangling on a deal.

European Commission vice president Maros Sefcovic’s cheery statement that he would be “very happy if we can start the new year with new agreements in place” will have made hearts sink in London and Brussels.

It wasn’t intended to be a deadline, but anyone involved in negotiations of this kind knows that as soon as a date is mentioned neither side will want to settle until it has tried to squeeze out every last drop of advantage to be gained by taking it to the wire.

So expect Friday’s lunch with UK Brexit minister Lord Frost to be followed by weeks of negotiators shuttling to and fro, angry noises about red lines, and British threats to bring the whole thing crashing down by invoking Article 16 of the protocol, which allows the suspension of its provisions but creates the risk of trade war.

The initial signals coming out of London were that Sefcovic’s initiative did not go far enough and that Brussels would have to move on Frost’s demand to remove European Court of Justice (ECJ) decision-making power over trade in Northern Ireland, which he regards as a breach of sovereignty, even though it doesn’t appear to bother any of the actual businesses involved.

But the noises from Brussels suggested they had anticipated precisely this response. The European Commission believes it has made major concessions to deal with the difficulties experienced by businesses on both sides of the Irish border as a result of Brexit, and that the package will eventually be accepted by London.

But they also believe that the Johnson-Frost negotiating stance requires them to be able to claim victory over the Brussels bureaucrats.

So sources were swift to stress that this was not a “take-it-or-leave-it” deal and there was still room to negotiate. And no sooner had Mr Sefcovic finished speaking than whispers started circulating about a potential “landing zone” under which a new arbitration panel would be set up to oversee the protocol, with the ECJ merely being consulted on legal questions relating to the single market.

No matter what bellicose rhetoric emerges from Downing Street in the interim, that is the solution we can expect will be found, sometime between the moment you send out your first Christmas cards and the time you eat your last turkey sandwich. For all our sakes, let’s hope it’s nearer to the former than the latter.

Yours,

Andrew Woodcock

Political editor