EU COMMISSION chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, gave a master class in arrogance yesterday as he looked down his nose at the UK ruling class saying the EU will teach the British a lesson.
It was an opportunity to ‘teach the British people and others what leaving the EU means’. ‘Blackmailer’ Barnier protested he would never resort to blackmail but saw it as his job to ‘educate’ the UK about the price it would pay for leaving the EU ‘club’.
Speaking at a conference in Italy on Saturday, he told the Ambrosetti forum: ‘There are extremely serious consequences of leaving the single market and it hasn’t been explained to the British people. ‘We intend to teach people… what leaving the single market means.’
Tory Brexit secretary, David Davis, responded to Barnier’s remarks saying the EU does ‘not want to talk about the future’, that it was ‘frightened’ and the UK would not be bounced into a divorce bill deal. This exchange came after a week of talks in Brussels about the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, scheduled to take place in March 2019, which increased tensions between the two sides.
The EU suggested the UK must accept some key principles, such as honouring the commitment it made in 2014 to pay 14% of the EU budget until 2020.
Barnier said that a future free trade deal would be different to all others in the past and there had to be assurances there would be no unfair competition in the form of social, environmental or fiscal dumping, or state aid.
Davis told the Andrew Marr Show yesterday that the UK would not be pressured into agreeing an EU divorce bill until it is sure the sums being demanded are fair. He dismissed newspaper reports the UK had secretly agreed to pay a figure of up to £50bn as ‘nonsense’.
Davis said what Barnier is ‘concerned about of course is he’s not getting the answer on money… they’ve set this up to try and create pressure on us on money… they’re trying to play time against money’.
He added: ‘We’re going through (the Brexit bill) line by line, and they’re finding it difficult because we’ve got good lawyers… he wants to put pressure on us, which is why the stance this week in the press conference.’
