'Europe' might finally get it?

The Owl of Minerva finally takes to the air over Europe, via an EU press handout faithfully printed in the Guradnia  :

EU officials now believe the UK government is prepared to risk a no-deal exit when the transition period comes to an end on 31 December, and will try to pin the blame on Brussels if talks fail...A UK document leaked to the Sun on Sunday, warning of public disorder, shortages and price hikes in the event of a no-deal Brexit, was perceived in Brussels as a sign of the government’s seriousness about leaving the EU single market and customs union with no agreement.

And as a tat for some tit:

Germany has scrapped plans to discuss Brexit at a high-level diplomatic meeting next week because there has not been “any tangible progress” in talk...Dropping Brexit from next week’s diplomatic agenda is a sign of deepening pessimism in Brussels. “People underestimate how bleak the mood is in the EU negotiation team,” said an EU official who added that time was running out [has the clock stopped ticking?] to negotiate a complex legal treaty expected to exceed 400 pages.

Well yes -- 400 pages and no doubt yards of explanatory notes. We will need to extend the transition period no doubt. There is some comfort in noting that 'EU sources are increasingly frustrated with the UK chief negotiator, David Frost' So much more stubborn than the patsy Olllie Robbins (remember him?).

Hilariously:

“More and more people have come to the conclusion that Brexit ideology trumps Brexit pragmatism in the UK government,” the diplomat [Barnier?] said. “If the UK really wanted to jump off the Brexit cliff for ideological reasons, there would be no way for the EU to stop this.” If the UK’s negotiating stance became “more pragmatic and realistic”, there was still a chance to save the talks, they added.

Even the Grun notes that:

For the EU, “pragmatism” means accepting that tariff-free access to the single market necessitates common standards on environment, state aid, worker and consumer protection – a position rejected by the UK.

And in the name of balance (and probably because there was another convenient press release)

British officials hit back, accusing the EU of slowing progress by insisting that all difficult issues had to be resolved in parallel. “The EU’s insistence that nothing can now progress until we have accepted EU positions on fisheries and state aid policy is a recipe for holding up the whole negotiation at a moment when time is short for both sides,” said a UK source close to negotiations...“We are also faced with the EU’s frustrating insistence on parallelism, meaning that they will not progress areas apart from these ‘difficult’ ones until we have moved towards their position on them. That’s a sure way to hold up the negotiations.

 The Graun editorial personalises as ever:

[Johnson]...deals in grand ambitions, not plans for their realisation. When things go wrong he shifts the blame... He operates one day at a time, stumbling from one problem to the next, with no sense of a strategic horizon.

The problem is most extreme in relation to Brexit. Every stage of the UK’s uncoupling from the EU has been mapped out by treaty, including the expiry of transitional arrangements at the end of this year. By then, a free trade deal is supposed to have been negotiated and ratified. That is getting harder with each passing week. The impediment is British reluctance [of course] to recognise what is realistically available, or understand the imbalances of power in negotiations between a lone country and a continental trading bloc.

The UK still demands pristine sovereignty, [imagine!] with no obligation to align its standards with EU markets, plus a right to subsidise domestic industries to a degree not permitted under Brussels rules [the Guardia might finally be getting it too].

The Garun editorial team might be relaying Brussels views with this?

A report that Tony Abbott, a former Australian prime minister, might take on a senior trade advisory role is a case in point. Setting aside Mr Abbott’s notoriously rebarbative character, the appointment would be consistent with the myth, common among Brexit supporters, that trade deals are conjured into being by swaggering personalities....The reality is that good outcomes in a trade deal are achieved by the application of time, attention to detail, experienced negotiators and a rational appraisal of the other side’s interests.

Only nice people cosmopolitan, cultured, European, one might say, should negotiate then. More KitKat anyone?