As Boris Johnson’s motorcade swept into the European commission headquarters on Wednesday night, it was greeted with an interminable line of 27 fluttering blue and yellow flags – and a lone red, white and blue union jack, drooping forlornly at the end.
The symbolism was substantial. On the pavement, the TV cameras were gathered. There was a small and very British protest in favour of a deal: Three Wise Men dressed in colourful homemade robes singing bravely in the cold.
“Star of Europe, star so bright,” they carolled. “Guide us to a deal tonight. Stop us leaving, kicking, screaming, with no deal and with no rights.”
Hector McGillivray, a retired commission staffer, waved a homemade star because “Boris badly needs some guidance”. His friend Jeremy had a “box of empty promises”, while Hussain was offering some face-saving masks.
But other than that, the crunch dinner to decide the fate of Brexit stirred precious little passion on the half-frozen, and almost wholly deserted, streets of Brussels’ European quarter. Few knew it was happening; even fewer cared.
“Are they really?” asked Emma Delprez, 37, a PR consultant, after she was informed earlier in the afternoon that the British prime minister and Ursula von der Leyen, the European commission president, were to meet in a do-or-die attempt to break the deadlock.
“I had no idea. I’ve kind of given up following it, to be honest. It seems to have been going on for ever. I don’t understand the ins and outs of it but the English do seem to be causing a lot of trouble. I hope whatever they get is worth it.”
Wrapped in a quilted jacket, scarf and gloves on his way to pick up a panini on the Rue Archimède, Dimitri Vermeulen, 48, a corporate lawyer, was more dismissive still.
“I’ve got no clue what will come out of it,” he said. “The Brits don’t know what they want – or at least they do, but they also know it’s not possible, and that the alternative will be a disaster. So it’s not surprising they’re finding it hard to make up their minds. But really, I’ve lost patience with Brexit.”
Behind him, the lights of the Berlaymont, the 13-storey steel, glass and concrete commission building where Johnson and Von der Leyen dined, were largely dimmed. As with all the European buildings in Brussels, its staff have mainly been working from home since March.
The cafes and restaurants of the surrounding streets, filled with multilingual chatter in non-Covid times, were closed bar the odd optimistic sign insisting “Open for takeaways”. It was 2C and the wind whistling through the office blocks of the Schuman roundabout made the few people who were out reluctant to stop.
It felt a suitably desolate backdrop to the high-stakes encounter that, more than four years after Britain voted to leave the bloc, may finally decide whether it does so with a deal regulating the future trading relations with its largest partner.
“Actually, I don’t even know whether it will do that,” said a tall Dane working for “a part of the EU” so unwilling to be further identified. “It’s all theatre, isn’t it? Or it is for Johnson, anyway. He has to show he’s taken the fight to the enemy, that he’s battled for Britain to the bitter end. That’s who he is.”
But what no one yet knew, the Dane said, rubbing his gloved hands together, was whether “it’s theatre aimed at dressing up a great British climbdown as some kind of victory, or allowing him to pretend the talks’ failure is all Europe’s fault. And I suspect we won’t know that straight away.”
In the children’s playground on the Square Ambiorix, a couple of hundred metres from the Berlaymont, Claire Martens, 31, was pushing her small son – face barely visible beneath an oversized woollen hat – on the swings.
“I’m past caring,” she said. “I think it’s very sad, but it’s gone on for long enough now. If they want to really go off all on their own, they should do it. See what good it does them. They never really belonged in the first place, did they?”
