Brexit Is Nice Work If You Can Get It in the EU. Not So in U.K.
Brexit has been a boon for political careers in the European Union. In the U.K. it has destroyed them.
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(Bloomberg) -- Brexit has been a boon for political careers in the European Union. In the U.K. it has destroyed them.
The EU’s top Brexit negotiators are on the up. A week after U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May was forced to resign, momentum is building over EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier’s prospects of getting one of the bloc’s most powerful jobs.
With French President Emmanuel Macron’s support, Barnier is now second-favorite to become European Commission president later this year. Barnier has traveled European capitals over the past three years stitching together a unified Brexit position; now he visits those governments and is lauded as the man who made a success of the U.K.’s departure.
His deputy, and the person who did most of the nitty-gritty negotiating, Sabine Weyand was on Wednesday named the bloc’s top civil servant for trade, an influential role that will see her oversee talks on the long-term relationship between the U.K. and EU when Brexit finally happens, as well as shape ties with other countries.
Meanwhile Guy Verhofstadt, Brexit coordinator for the European Parliament, saw the Liberal group that he leads break the stranglehold of the two main center parties at last week’s EU elections. He could become kingmaker as the bloc makes its most senior appointments.
In the U.K., the difference in fortunes for those caught up in Brexit couldn’t be any starker. May tearfully resigned as prime minister over her failure to get her exit agreement passed. The frontrunner to succeed her, former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, faces a court hearing over allegations he made false claims about the EU before the 2016 referendum.
The negotiations with the U.K. saw off two Brexit secretaries and has crippled the opposition Labour Party, whose ambiguous stance on the issue saw it lose almost as much as support as May’s Conservatives in last week’s polls.
Many pro-Brexit politicians blame Olly Robbins, the official who led the British half of the Brexit negotiations and sat opposite Weyand for two years, for the mess the U.K. finds itself in.
Once he was tipped to become the U.K.’s top civil servant. In January, Brexiteer MP Mark Francois said he should sent to the Tower of London -- the ancient castle where kings and queens used to imprison those who’d fallen out of favor.
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, Nikos Chrysoloras
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