Theresa May is banking on the EU to save her deal – but a distracted Europe has bigger fish to fry

The prime minister may get a ‘piece of paper’ that addresses the Northern Ireland backstop, but it is unlikely to rally enough support at home

Is he a friend or foe? Jean-Claude Juncker is portrayed by much of the UK media as the enemy. Theresa May rebuked him at last month’s EU summit for saying her demands were “nebulous”. And yet, surprisingly, Downing Street is hopeful Juncker will prove the friend May desperately needs to save her ailing Brexit deal.

Juncker wants to help May win round the Democratic Unionist Party which, despite talks with the prime minister yesterday, remains strongly opposed to the backstop to prevent a hard Irish border.

Ministers believe the DUP holds the key to Commons approval of May’s deal.

Although the DUP has only 10 MPs, if it switched sides, a big chunk of the 110 Tory MPs who oppose the agreement would probably follow suit, creating vital momentum.

May allies expect her to lose the first vote on the deal, due on 15 January. She intends to come back for a second bite, in the hope that some Labour backbenchers, worried about the growing prospect of a no-deal exit on 29 March, would then back her agreement, and neutralise the revolt by hardline Tory Eurosceptics.

Wishful thinking? Possibly.

To have even a fighting chance, May needs further reassurances from the EU that the backstop, which would mean a UK-wide customs union, would be temporary. “She’ll get a piece of paper,” one EU insider told me, saying it could run to three-five pages and, if necessary, repeat “temporary” 10 times.

However, it is doubtful May will win a legally binding commitment that would put the EU’s new words on an equal footing with the 585-page withdrawal agreement.

Ireland, backed strongly by the rest of the EU, is refusing to reopen that because it would keep Northern Ireland in a customs union and most of the single market if no long-term UK-EU trade deal has been reached by December 2020. No one in Brussels expects an agreement by then. “It will take at least five years,” one diplomat said.

Even if May wins a firmer pledge to complete a trade deal in 2020, so the backstop would never be needed, that would not allay DUP and Tory fears.

May is in denial about the timeframe; she cannot concede the UK would still be in the EU’s orbit at the next scheduled general election in 2022. Under the withdrawal agreement, the government could avoid invoking the backstop by extending the transitional period beyond December 2020, but that would be controversial as the UK would still have to contribute to EU coffers.

There is little confidence in Brussels that May will persuade MPs to approve the deal. When a member is struggling to ratify an agreement, the EU will tweak it if there is a guarantee the changes will get it over the line. But May cannot give such a guarantee. Indeed, she could not even risk putting the deal to a vote last month.

She has not been helped by her performance at the EU summit, when she was vague about her demands on the backstop, apparently out of fear they would immediately leak.

So there are limits to how much time and energy the EU will expend. While Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, will play ball, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, is wary. In his eyes, diplomats say, May didn’t deliver her side of the bargain after EU leaders held an extra summit in November to seal the agreement.

He is reluctant to see another one this month to help May trumpet the new EU statement. Macron is not alone; several EU governments are frustrated by May and keen to move on from Brexit.

It’s hard to imagine it from London, but in Brussels, Brexit is not the dominant issue.

The EU faces several big challenges in 2019 and “the Brits” are well down its list of priorities. The European parliament elections in May will test the rise of right-wing populists across the continent; they could deliver a nasty shock to the established centre-right and socialist parties who have dominated the parliament. Then a new European Commission will be appointed, creating a hiatus as member states horse-trade the top Brussels jobs, including the presidency of the European Central Bank.

A much bigger threat to the EU project than Brexit is its growing east-west divide. Countries in central and eastern Europe feel unloved and misunderstood by Brussels, which is alarmed by their stance on human rights. Interestingly, the EU’s internal critics want to reform rather than leave the bloc like the UK.

Italy’s populist coalition, and its budget plans, is another potential headache. Then, for good measure, there’s Donald Trump, the threat of a global trade war and Vladimir Putin.

A lot of balls to juggle. While the EU will try to help May, it is unlikely to go far enough to transform the parliamentary arithmetic in her favour. As battle resumes in the Commons next week, May still needs a miracle to salvage her deal.