Seriously, and I say this sincerely as an ex-colleague, not as an anti-Brexit voice: give it up for now and put the energy into the COVID-19 response.

You and your team can help with UK-EU coordination.

Extend, restart when it’s possible, and take the time to get it right.
1/ https://twitter.com/davidghfrost/status/1247561824062656513

This is not about being pro- or anti-Brexit or the EU or the UK. Brexit is irreversible in the short and medium term. Everyone accepts that as fact. The UK has left the EU, even if the process is far from complete.
2/

This is about creating a relationship between important entities that will help to define the future for each and for a continent, for, perhaps, decades and more.

Rushing to hit an arbitrary political deadline or meet long-gone promises is unnecessary and dangerous.
3/

Those deadlines and promises were made in a different world. A world where this appeared the most important thing, and short-term political gain and internal party politics were all that could be thought of.
4/

Well our short term is now occupied by trying to prevent thousands of nasty deaths, and the future beyond even a couple of months is unknown.
5/

We have no idea what the world and conditions will be like when this agreement either comes into force, or fails to come into force with nothing to to fall back on.
6/

Elements under negotiation that seem trivial now may turn out to be crucial, and those most hotly contested may turn out to be molehills obliterated from view by huge mountains.

We just don’t know.
7/

There’s no negotiating advantage to either side here, just the sapping of scarce resources that could be better used. A hurried, simple, bare-bones agreement helps no one. A failure to reach agreement hurts everyone, and everyone is already hurting.
8/

The UK requested a transition period to ease uncertainty, avoid sudden shocks, and to give breathing space for citizens and companies and organisations to adapt.

All are now adapting to an even bigger shock, the magnitude and implications of which can only be imagined.
9/

An extension to the transition period should be requested for precisely the same reasons the period itself was agreed. Stability, avoidance of shocks, breathing space for all.
10/

And from a pure negotiation point of view, with decision making capacity maxed out across the continent, the response to difficult asks can only be a no for now. From a point of view of pure rational self-interest, this is a route to not getting what you want.
11/

Agreement between Member States is not a default, but an active task, and none are prepared to let anything on the nod with so much detail and so much at stake.

Line ministries putting together positions and Cabinet agreeing is similarly difficult now.
12/

So shelve it. Not to stop Brexit (personally I’d prefer more long-term certainty at the earliest, but that’s not possible), but to have a chance of it not being just further calamity and harm to heap upon people and states who’ve known little else this year.
13/

We’ve seen the consequences of paring to the bone, going to the wire, working at surge capacity in normal times. We’ve seen what happens when you gamble that the worst just won’t happen. It has.

It mustn’t again, not on top of this, not just for misplaced political pride.
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