EC wants mountain of VAT money as Remain civil servants exonerated

Some familiar tactics have reappeared, as Brexit continues to frighten and annoy the GUardian. First:

[UK chief negotiator] Frost said there had been “very little progress” in the latest discussions between the two sides, adding that he found it “hard to understand why the EU insists on an ideological approach which makes it more difficult to reach a mutually beneficial agreement”.

Good to see the UK playing a bit of hardball itself:

The British government has previously said it could be forced to refocus its attention away from the negotiations and towards preparing the country for a no-deal outcome if significant progress has not been made by 1 July.

And an appeal to heads of government over the EC and Barnier might work this time, if Barnier's 'European values' over fishing turn out to be mostly French:

“In order to facilitate those discussions, we intend to make public all the UK draft legal texts during next week so that the EU’s member states and interested observers can see our approach in detail.

Elsewhere, in a brazen bit of arse-covering:

Theresa May and Boris Johnson let the former chief Brexit negotiator Olly Robbins and other civil servants hang out to dry after they became “targets for political attacks”, an investigation into Whitehall’s role in the Brexit drama of the past four years has found.

It is the Instuitute for Government, a Remain outfit to its boots, that offer the 'investigation':

Maddy Thimont Jack, [crazy name,crazy person!]  senior researcher at the Institute for Government, said: “Brexit demonstrated the very best of the civil service. It managed to unpick a 47-year relationship with the EU in less than three years, working under immense pressure and to extremely tight timelines

How's this for a gloss on Robbins' 'Kit Kat deal' to bamboozle the British public with a BRINO:

...the near breakdown of May’s government and lack of clarity left civil servants trying to build consensus [!] through “tried and tested methods of ambiguous wording and ingenious drafting”

There is also some technical veiling:

Officials had to rely on super-secure Rosa terminals, put in place by the National Cyber Security Centre, rather than their own computers....“Secrecy caused a lot of unnecessary stress in the run-up to 29 March 2019, with far too few people having access to vital documents ^...Vast improvements were made under Michael Gove when he was appointed as head of exit operations (XO) and no-deal planning, the authors conclude. With a dashboard involving 350 milestones [wha?] and secrecy levels dropped, the new body is said to have moved swiftly

We can rest assured that all is well now though:

Ultimately the pace was unsustainable and its focus was narrow: to avert the immediate chaos of crashing out of the EU [by not leaving after lots of prevarication] rather than the longer term consequence for the country....But for its flaws, it proved a model that was easily adjusted and used to effect in the coronavirus response, mixing officials and ministers on a cross-departmental basis, the study found.

The most gripping weekend reading came from the indispensable Briefings for Britain, however.

This Thursday, the European Court of Justice delivers its verdict in the European Commission’s infraction proceedings against the United Kingdom for failing to impose VAT on transactions in the City’s multi-trillion-dollar derivatives markets. Launched during the murky days of the Brexit withdrawal negotiations in 2018...The timing of this notice of infringement, for a supposed infraction dating back four decades (i.e. giving the Commission plenty of time to request that the UK amend its legislation), and coming after we had voted to leave the EU, could not be more political

Had the UK left the EU without a Withdrawal Agreement, as it should have done, on 29 March 2019, the matter would have ended there. But pusillanimous Remainers ensured that we remained locked in servitude to the EU to the tune of £1 billion per month..... in the torrid days of multiple lost votes on the draft Withdrawal Agreement and with Remainers overturning every democratic and parliamentary principle in the book, the Commission decided to make sure it could still claim its pound of flesh 

Apart from anything else, the article brings back into the light the matter of payment of VAT receipts, almost completely ignored during the whole debate, except when J Wetherspoon insisted that we pay a hefty proportion of our VAT receipts to the EC as part of our 'contribution' . It was never discussed anywhere in the Remainer press as far as I know:

we pay the highest amount of VAT as own resources into the EU budget out of all member states, at €3.3 billion in 2018.  we contribute the second highest amount of customs duties to the EU (significantly more than France, at €2 billion). 

The amount is estimated (by another factchecking organisation) at 'nearly a fifth' (gross) of all VAT payments to the EU -- maybe dropping to a tenth after a 'rebate'

It would therefore seem very probable that an adverse judgment on Thursday would see the immediate launch by the Commission of a claim for underpaid UK contributions to the EU budget, money it will claim should have been owed had we charged VAT on our derivatives markets. The UK VAT base, already the largest in terms of own resources contributions, would increase to an enormous level.

BforB's correpondent thinks the reverse will happen and we will finally leave without an agreement. I certainly cannot see even the Remainers accepting a further multi-billion payment, so maybe this was meant to take place after we finally remained?