"To frame this stage of the Brexit process by using a rugby analogy (because, God knows, I frame everything else by reference to rugby, so why should Brexit escape that treatment): the All Blacks.
"The All Blacks don't play super-complicated rugby. There's no secret killer move. They just do the basic things very, very well, at the right time, at speed, all the time. And they trust in their ability to execute according to that plan, every time.
"It's not developed overnight. It's the product of decades in decades of doing things that way. The players now were trained by the players who were trained by the players who invested in that perfection of simplicity.
"You can disrupt it; but you need to be at least as good as they are, and to put their decision-making under as much pressure as they put yours under by giving them not even a millisecond of time and room.
"Because they do not panic. They've done this so often they know how to do it again. And often, it can seem like it's competitive against them. Until time comes into play, and they up the tempo and the pressure further.
"When the clock is running down against the All Blacks, they will increase the pressure on you. They will make you have to make choices every instant, in attack and especially on defence. They exert so much pressure that your decision-making crumbles and you make more mistakes.
"And they exploit those mistakes. And then you're further behind. And you have to make more decisions, riskier decisions, to try and get back into it. And they pressurize that decision-making, more and more, until it crumbles and you make mistakes.
"Wash, rinse, repeat.
"The EU is the All Blacks of negotiations. It's what it does. Even to get onto that team, every EU27 leader has spent years in the Super Rugby of fraught coalition and other negotiations. The entire structure works to this and everyone knows how to play the game properly.
"The UK, by comparison, is a scratch team that hasn't played in ages but basically had a last puff of the ciggie, token roll of the shoulders, and jogged out short-handed thinking it'll be fine, we'll show these chaps what's what, few early hits, they won't like it, we'll do them.
"Brexit as rugby: it's the last ten, the All Blacks are up. We know how this one ends. Oh, and one thing: if you're a former member of the same side, don't get lippy. It won't help you. At. All."
Hopefully that clears things up.
