“There is still scope for compromise”, the German chancellor Angela Merkel commented on the ongoing talks. In London, Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared “the trade talks are over”. It was 16 October 2020, two months before Johnson agreed to a deal. On that day, Michel Barnier said in a press conference in Brussels that he was ready to intensify talks. Simultaneously, David Frost, Johnson's negotiator, lamented in a tweet that the EU refused to accelerate negotiations. Barnier looked with incredulity at yet another bizarre situation created by a British government searching for a Potemkin confrontation. After ten days of standstill, talks resumed. “I am not sure why this political drama was needed”, Barnier told his team of a hundred EU negotiators who were eager to go back to work and conclude a deal. Brexit in London was a different tale from Brexit in Brussels.

Initially, the victory of the Leave vote in the June 2016 referendum caused a shock in Brussels. It happened one year after the EU overcame sharp divisions between member states in order to avoid “Grexit”, the exit of Greece from the eurozone. There were tensions between governments on migration flows and rule of law violations by Poland and Hungary. The crisis Brexit would cause “could and probably will dwarf them all”, said the BBC's Chris Morris on the day after the referendum. Many thought Morris was on point but the story turned out differently. The political crisis in London never crossed the channel. EU member states preferred to engage in fights with each other on migration, economic and monetary union, climate change, or the EU budget, to name but a few issues. For Brexit, the EU acted as a united club while Westminster tore itself apart. EU leaders concurred from the start on what to do and adopted a clear negotiation mandate for the European Commission and Michel Barnier. Paradoxically, the UK was less clear than the EU about what it wanted from Brexit, at least until December 2019 when Johnson won a comfortable majority and, in his words, “Bob's your uncle”.