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Talks through the night, a pre-dawn flight, and finally the deal was done Talks through the night, a pre-dawn flight – how the deal was done
(about 4 hours later)
Theresa May made crunch calls to Arlene Foster, the DUP leader, late into Thursday night to secure agreement to move on the Brexit talks, while the Christmas party at Downing Street played on around her. It took Theresa May 11 months and 200 miles to travel from her starting position that “no deal is better than a bad deal” to the perception that any deal was better than no Brexit. The last, frantic, dash from Downing Street to the European commission headquarters in the early hours was the easy bit.
Senior advisers thrashed out the final details into the early hours of Friday, with the prime minister sleeping for just two hours before leaving Downing Street at 3.30am for a drive to RAF Northolt to take the short flight to Brussels. From 3.30am on Friday, her final drive to RAF Northolt for a short flight to Brussels and back was over in a flash – even for a bleary-eyed team that had just two hours’ sleep after late-night talks with the Democratic Unionist party. A day earlier, the DUP had threatened to “cut off its eyelids” rather than a blink first in a bitter standoff over the draft text of the EU agreement.
After breakfast with David Davis, the Brexit secretary, and Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European commission, the deal was done. Her plane had touched down in the UK by 9.30am and she headed for her Maidenhead constituency. Over in Brussels, the climax of this year-long exercise was no less tense. The first official indication of a breakthrough came early in the morning when the commission chief of staff, Martin Selmayr, posted a picture of white smoke emerging from a papal chimney.
“It was a long night,” her spokesman said. “The text kept changing until it was in a place where everybody felt it was what we needed to achieve.” But it was the scenes inside No 10 that made picking a pope look routine in comparison. Just to make the night feel even more surreal, it happened to coincide with a long-scheduled Christmas party for Downing Street staff. One official revealed how the tense mood contrasted with routine office celebrations “going on around the prime minister”.
The work was relentless over the past 48 hours, officials said. “The prime minister had a tough day yesterday. There was a lot of work to be done, a lot of conversations to be had,” her spokesman said. “We’re pleased we’ve got to the place we are this morning.” Downing Street sources and aides from the Department for Exiting the EU (DExEU) describe incremental progress throughout the day on Thursday, but it was late into the evening when all sides agreed. May made two personal calls to the DUP leader, Arlene Foster, one at 9pm and another at 11pm that in effect sealed the deal.
Downing Street and aides from the Department for Exiting the EU (DExEU) described incremental progress made throughout the day on Thursday, but it was late into the evening when all sides agreed. May made two personal calls to Foster, one at 9pm and another at 11pm. Over the course of Thursday and into the night, May kept her circle tight. Downing Street said the two leading Brexiters in the cabinet, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, were not part of the negotiations, though Johnson popped in for a short chat.
Earlier in the evening she had spoken to Leo Varadkar, the Irish taoiseach, and Juncker. Earlier in the evening the prime minister had spoken to Leo Varadkar, the Irish taoiseach, and the commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker. During the day, a delegation of DUP MPs – Nigel Dodds, Sammy Wilson, Jeffrey Donaldson and Emma Little-Pengelly – spoke to the prime minister with her chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, and chief whip, Julian Smith. This extensive consultation was in stark contrast to the collapse of talks on Monday when the DUP complained it had not been shown the final text of the agreement.
On Wednesday, May spoke to Michelle O’Neill, leader of Sinn Féin in the Northern Ireland assembly, and a second call was planned for Friday afternoon. Foster said on Friday morning her call had not ended in complete agreement, but May had informed her she intended to press on with the offer they had discussed. “We cautioned the prime minister about proceeding with this agreement in its present form, given the issues which still need to be resolved and the views expressed to us by many of her own party colleagues,” Foster said. “However, it was ultimately a matter for the prime minister to decide how she chose to proceed.”
During the day, a delegation of DUP MPs – Nigel Dodds, Sammy Wilson, Jeffrey Donaldson and Emma Little-Pengelly – spoke to the prime minister with her chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, and chief whip, Julian Smith. An exhausted Downing Street team headed for bed anyway, knowing that in a few hours’ time they would have to face the cameras in Brussels to sell the deal. Barwell, the former MP for Croydon Central, left shortly after 1am for less than three hours’ sleep before the dash to Brussels, tweeting that it had been a “long night”.
The tense mood was lifted by the clash of the race to clinch a deal with the Downing Street staff’s Christmas party. One aide said the celebrations were “going on around the prime minister”. Shortly before dawn, thanks to a waiting RAF plane, the Downing Street team arrived in Brussels, first for breakfast with Juncker and the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, then for a press conference and finally to start looking to the future with the European council president, Donald Tusk.
Barwell, the former MP for Croydon Central, left shortly after 1am for three hours’ sleep before the dash to Brussels, tweeting that it had been a “long night”. Brussels officials later revealed they had been negotiating “non-stop” in private since the near collapse of the official public process last month, but the EU position hardly budged throughout. Asked what concessions he had granted to match the UK flexibility, Barnier later told reporters that the only one he could think of was a decison not to charge the UK removal fees for relocating EU regulatory agencies away from London.
In a rare tweet, Smith wrote that he saw his role in the talks as reflecting the views of Conservative MPs. “I have done everything I can to represent the wide range of views of Conservatives colleagues.” The cabinet did not get a sign-off. May flew to Brussels without explicitly seeking ministers’ agreement, No 10 said. “In times like this there is some leeway for the prime minister, she has the authority to act in the best interests of the country,” her spokesman said. “You can see the response from cabinet colleagues on social media and elsewhere has been supportive.”
Foster said on Thursday morning that the call had not ended in complete agreement, but May had informed her she intended to press on with the offer they had discussed. May is due to make a statement to the Commons on Monday, the first chance MPs will get to grill her on the detail of the joint statement. On Friday afternoon she was due to speak again to Michelle O’Neill, leader of Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland.
“We cautioned the prime minister about proceeding with this agreement in its present form, given the issues which still need to be resolved and the views expressed to us by many of her own party colleagues,” Foster said. Reactions across Europe were mixed, with the Irish Times claiming Dublin had helped save Britain from a hard Brexit, while French and German news sites led on other stories.
“However, it was ultimately a matter for the prime minister to decide how she chose to proceed.” But in the short term, at least, the Downing Street machine had restored some of its battered reputation for competence in a whirlwind of last-minute diplomacy. Despite trumpeting half a dozen changes to the 15-page agreement, the DUP edits made little difference to the overall meaning of what May and David Davis took to breakfast.
Over the course of Thursday and into the night, May kept her circle tight. Downing Street said the two leading Brexiters in the cabinet, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, were not part of the negotiations, though Johnson popped in for a short chat mid-afternoon on Thursday. The main impact was to remove any outstanding ambiguity about the scale of the climbdown from a hardline position set out by May last January in a speech at Lancaster House. Back then, May had insisted Britain would rid itself of European regulation, courts and financial demands while retaining frictionless trade in future. Instead, an agreement to start talks about trade next March required “full alignment” with single market rules, an ongoing role for the court of justice and a divorce bill of at least £35bn (€40bn).
The crunch telephone calls with Foster late on Thursday night mainly resulted in an extra emphasis on the deal applying to the whole of the UK rather than just Northern Ireland.
The real battle was to persuade Tory backbenchers that the price was worth it to keep the faltering Brexit show on the road. Between calls to Dublin and Belfast on Thursday night, Smith, the chief whip, was careful to document May’s meeting with Johnson on Twitter.
A nice moment last night as @BorisJohnson comes in for a quick update from @theresa_may pic.twitter.com/G5a4Z2nkdPA nice moment last night as @BorisJohnson comes in for a quick update from @theresa_may pic.twitter.com/G5a4Z2nkdP
The cabinet did not get sign-off either. May flew to Brussels without explicitly seeking their nod, No 10 said. “In times like this there is some leeway for the prime minister. She has the authority to act in the best interests of the country,” her spokesman said. “You can see the response from cabinet colleagues on social media and elsewhere has been supportive.” Smith had been widely blamed for the embarrassing collapse of talks on Monday lunchtime after the DUP was not shown a draft of the agreed text and feared there would be divergence between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. Reassurances on Tuesday by Davis that the answer would be for the deal to apply regulatory alignment nationwide had caused palpitations among leading Brexiters such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, who called on May to repaint her fading “red lines”.
May is set to make a statement to the Commons on Monday, the first chance MPs will get to grill her on the detail of the joint statement. In a rare tweet, Smith wrote that he saw his role in the talks as reflecting the views of Conservative MPs. “I have done everything I can to represent the wide range of views of Conservatives colleagues,” he wrote.
But the whips’ office need not have worried as Friday’s deal finally landed to muted applause from all wings of the divided party. Gove performed a graceful pirouette on the BBC’s Today programme and suggested it was a coup for the prime minister. Mogg went quiet and the chief remainer Anna Soubry hailed it as a victory for common sense.
Given the very serious possibility of no deal being reached in time for the Brussels deadline, all sides had something to celebrate. The Brexiters finally looked to be getting their Brexit, and those urging business-friendly pragmatism could celebrate a partial victory. Explaining how any of it was consistent with pre-referendum promises to “take back control” could wait for another day.