Lying Politicians Leading U.K. to No-Deal Brexit, Ex-Envoy Says
Lying Politicians Leading U.K. to No-Deal Brexit, Ex-Envoy Says
(Bloomberg) -- The U.K.’s former ambassador to the European Union blasted the “denial, delusion-mongering and deception” in British politics, which he predicts is leading the country to a damaging no-deal Brexit.
Ivan Rogers, who served as Theresa May’s envoy in Brussels until 2017, attacked the political elite “which has great difficulties discerning and telling the truth.”
All the candidates in the Tory leadership race, except one, have said they want to renegotiate the Brexit deal. Boris Johnson, the front-runner, has also vowed to take the country out of the bloc on Oct. 31 -- whether or not he manages a renegotiation. Rogers was set to be one of the U.K.’s main Brexit negotiators until he resigned after falling out with May’s top advisers.
The former envoy said he doesn’t expect the EU’s remaining 27 nations to offer a fundamentally different Brexit deal -- and not one that inserts a time limit or a unilateral exit clause on the most contentious part of the agreement, the so-called “backstop” for the Irish border.
“Seen from the other side of the Channel, there is simply no political upside whatever for the 27 to offer a new PM, particularly an avid Brexit campaigner and a populist with Trumpite attributes, the basis on which to say that he had delivered some fundamentally different and better deal,” Rogers said in a speech at a wealth management conference in London.
He didn’t say which candidate he had in mind, but Johnson, the front-runner and the face of the Leave campaign in 2016, was the only potential leader he mentioned in his speech.
“You can hardly blame them for thinking that what we hear now might well all be bluster," Rogers said. “A flamboyant version of what the previous PM did for 34 months -- tell everyone what they most wanted to hear.”
Conservative members of Parliament are voting on Tuesday in the second of a series of ballots to whittle down the candidates to replace May. Grassroots Conservatives, who overwhelmingly back Brexit, will pick a winner from the final two.
Rogers said if Johnson becomes prime minister and sticks to his promise not to seek a Brexit extension beyond Oct. 31, then no-deal is a “certainty” because there’s no time to get a better deal before then.
“That is why serious players in Brussels and certain capitals have concluded, as have I, that we are now likely to be headed for a breakdown to no deal,” Rogers said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Ian Wishart in Brussels at iwishart@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Emma Ross-Thomas, Andrew Atkinson
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