The silent struggle at the heart of Brexit

According to Agata Gostyńska-Jakubowska, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform, the Brexit talks "have revealed that the British have limited understanding of how the EU operates. Some in the UK still tend to think that the EU would bend backwards and offer the UK a sweet deal if only the British negotiators knew how to properly exert pressure on the EU 27.
... Any attempt to go against strategic objectives of one of their own for the sake of reaching a deal with the UK would severely damage the EU's credibility in the eyes of its own members."