Will the Government Breach the Media’s Imaginary Brexit “Red Lines”?

An unusual thing happened at a parliamentary hearing last week: Brexit minister David Davis described his own government’s negotiating strategy as idiotic. Or that is the conclusion you might draw from many media reports from the last 18 months anyway.

In front of the Exiting the European Union Committee, Davis explained that “any idiot” entering into commercial negotiations with “red lines” would be needlessly limiting the possible outcomes. This seemed odd, as many media outlets have routinely informed us that the British government has set out “red lines” in the Article 50 negotiations.

So, what can these infamous unbreachable tenets be? The first answer is that they are the principles that Prime Minister Theresa May outlined for her government’s Brexit policy following the vote to leave the EU. The second is that the media invented them.

In the Lancaster House speech in January last year, May said, among other things, that:

· “We will take back control of our laws and bring an end to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in Britain”

· “We will ensure we can control immigration to Britain from Europe.”

· “Because we will no longer be members of the single market, we will not be required to contribute huge sums to the EU budget”

· “A Global Britain must be free to strike trade agreements with countries from outside the European Union too. That means I do not want Britain to be part of the Common Commercial Policy and I do not want us to be bound by the Common External Tariff.”

Together with similar comments at the 2016 Conservative conference, this seems to be the source of the phrase. However, it should probably be noted: the Prime Minister didn’t actually say “red lines”. Perhaps the closest we have to real government “red lines” is from Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, who was reported by The Sun in September to have four. But the relevant quote isn’t in the article and the reporter didn’t provide it on request. So perhaps it was more media red lines after all.

Clearly, the strongest defense for the media commentary is that, even if May hasn’t used it, the phrase is an accurate description of the government’s positioning. To some degree, that is reasonable: despite the desires of the non-Tory British establishment, the Conservatives do seem set on not just leaving the European political union, but also the economic union. As it’s understood that generally the two go together, and that economic integration made both possible and necessary greater political union, there is logic to the stance. The approach means no freedom of movement of persons obligations and it removes the UK from the direct jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the EU. So, it can be said that the Prime Minister did indeed set out some non-negotiable stances. Still, in the very same address, she added: “We are about to enter a negotiation. That means there will be give and take. There will have to be compromises.” Similar flexibility was previously signaled at the party conference. And indeed, if some detail is fleetingly examined, the positions might be better described as “starting principles” rather than “red lines”. For example, May said that she wanted UK courts to judge UK laws. That doesn’t rule out a role for a European court in interpreting the withdrawal agreement or adjudicating trade disputes. Freedom of movement for EU citizens into the UK will end, but there could be a generous offering for European workers who currently plug holes in the UK’s flexible labour markets. May said there would be no more “huge sums” paid to the EU — and it’s hard to conceive of a Brexit strategy other than Tony Blair’s where the UK would still contribute to the largest budget item, the Common Agricultural Policy — but she also said that the UK might pay for continued participation in joint programs.

Yet on the whole, the media isn’t interested in such nuance. And on occasions, it appears to be plain wrong. For example, last week Bloomberg put the phrase “red line” in quotes. I asked the reporter on Twitter what it referred to, but received no response. That looks like a mistake that Bloomberg needs to correct to respect its own standards. If some of the usage is down to confusion from journalists quoting each other, some of it is also down to anti-Brexit politics. Demonstrating the fourth estate’s standard appetite for contrition and self-reflection, following Davis’ comments The Guardian tried to make him look foolish by labeling the “red lines” exchange one of “twelve awkward moments” in the hearing. The justification? A 2014 parliamentary remark to David Cameron when he said: “Will the prime minister tell us his intentions as [to] bringing to this house the red-line issues that will feature in his renegotiation, and can he give us a preview of some of those issues today?” No matter that Davis had said “commercial” negotiations at the Brexit hearing, and no matter that he was clearly informing all and sundry that “red lines” was not his language. Perhaps if The Guardian were more interested in reporting on Brexit, and less on campaigning against it, then it would avoid this sort of embarrassing pettiness

Should all this be mere pedantry over journalistic sloppiness then it wouldn’t be significant. But the “red line” ploy broadly plays into the prevailing presentation of the negotiations in the anti-Brexit media in which the UK is presented as naive and inflexible. As President Obama knows, it is a useful political tactic to highlight your opponent’s “red lines”, as if they are subsequently not respected, then an attempt to be strong and decisive can be portrayed as a hubristic humiliation. Irresponsible media manipulation of the phrase was even capitalized on by the EU Commission, who publicized a graphic explaining the consequences of the UK’s “red lines” for future trading arrangements. The Huffington Post’s version? “The slide lays bare what Brussels thinks is the logic of the Prime Minister’s “red line” demands to be free of European courts, trade rules, migration and payments.”

And so it goes on.

Lost among this multilayered propaganda are some other details of the negotiations, whether it’s the complexity of the Single-Internal Market/EEA/Swiss bilaterals/Ukraine DCFTA, May’s promised flexibility, or the standard bargaining ploy of making an ambitious opening offer. It should also be considered that if either side has set out something like red lines, it is arguably the EU. The four freedoms of movement are repeatedly pronounced to be “indivisible”, despite the more messy reality evidenced by, for example, the EU-Ukraine arrangement. And backstopping the EU’s position is the protectionist guideline that the UK will face increased trade costs from being outside its club. Yet we haven’t heard too much about Brussels’ intransigent stances outside of the pro-Brexit press.

In addition to the myopia this all demonstrates, one of the Prime Minister’s more ambiguous Brexit positions has been largely ignored and could be one of the most significant. Also at Lancaster House, she said the UK wanted “not partial membership of the European Union, associate membership of the European Union, or anything that leaves us half-in, half-out.” It’s not clear whether May was referring to continuing economic integration via the European Economic Area, some as yet non-existent “associate membership” status, or an “association agreement”, which is a form of relationship the EU has with non-member states under Article 217 of the Lisbon Treaty. Somebody steeped in knowledge of the European project like Andrew Duff, the President of the pro-federalist Spinelli Group, believes that the failure to request an association agreement governing all aspects of the future partnership is a major misstep. Bureaucrats at the Commission like things filed neatly, and the European Parliament has called for an “association agreement” as the architecture for the UK’s sought after “deep and special partnership”. Has May failed to request such an arrangement because of a careless line in the Lancaster House speech that she doesn’t want to backtrack on? The press has largely ignored this potentially critical hostage to fortune despite its mild obsession with May’s opening gambits.

The entire “red lines” saga should be an unacceptable sequence in a developed democracy. You cannot possibly expect to have constructive national debates on complex, polarizing issues if journalists and editors are going to pass of questionable interpretations as verbatim citations, or not care about repeatedly misquoting major policy announcements from the Prime Minister. Of course, it’s conceivable that some sections of the media are not being lackadaisical, but are consciously debasing journalistic standards in pursuit of blocking implementation of the Referendum. A possibility that Mrs May seemed to be attuned to when she laid out the UK’s positions at Lancaster House: “That is why I have said before — and will continue to say — that every stray word and every hyped up media report is going to make it harder for us to get the right deal for Britain.”