This EU ‘divorce bill’ is more like a ransom | 29 November 2017

A ‘bill’ is not commonly subject to negotiation. It arrives after a customer has contracted for the purchase of goods or services, whose price — with the unique exception of American health care bills, which are more like muggings by gangs on mopeds — has been established in advance. For the average upstanding Briton, a bill is not a starting point, subject to haggling. It is something you pay.

The Lisbon Treaty’s Article 50 makes no mention of paying financial liabilities in order to leave the EU. Once the post-­referendum conversation turned immediately to the ‘divorce bill’, the May government’s big mistake from the off was bickering about its size. A better opening strategy would run not ‘How much?’ but ‘What divorce bill?’

First of all, we’re not talking about a marriage, but a membership. The mistaken conflation of a highly emotive institution with a prosaic subscription is germane. The dissolution of a marriage can be fraught, and entails a division of assets often unfair, taking little or no consideration of what income each party has contributed to the relationship.