06 May 2021

FT: Boris Johnson’s ‘madman’ strategy dumbfounded Brussels’ Brexit chief

Michel Barnier openly wondered whether Boris Johnson was pursuing a “madman strategy” in Brexit negotiations and came close to losing faith in the UK’s ability to keep its word during the gruelling talks, according to his diaries.

The EU’s chief negotiator for more than three years writes that the EU side was dumbfounded by the UK prime minister’s unpredictable approach — which Barnier refers to at one point as “political cinema”. Barnier’s diaries, which will be published in French on Thursday and in English later this year, are being released as the EU and UK grapple with implementing the post-Brexit deals they laboriously negotiated in the aftermath of Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the bloc.

The EU and UK have clashed since the start of the year on how to roll out a new system of trading rules for Northern Ireland, while France and Johnson’s government are currently locked in a dispute over fishing licenses.

The team currently in 10 Downing St does not measure up to the stakes and challenges of Brexit . . . I simply no longer have [a feeling of] trust Michel Barnier Barnier, who is now mooted as a potential centre-right candidate in next year’s French presidential election, stepped down from his role as chief Brexit negotiator after the UK’s exit from the EU single market on January 1.

His book — The Grand Illusion: A Secret Diary of Brexit — highlights one key moment of crisis in September 2020, when Johnson’s government moved to override its own divorce deal with Brussels in relation to arrangements for preventing a hard border on the island of Ireland. Barnier writes on September 8 2020: “The team currently in 10 Downing St does not measure up to the stakes and challenges of Brexit . . . I simply no longer have [a feeling of] trust. Well, we need trust to conclude an agreement.”

Barnier speculated whether the British had simply sought to “give themselves another lever in the negotiations, ready to abandon it later. So, a ‘madman strategy’,” he writes. The 542-page book records the EU’s astonishment at some of the UK prime minister’s suggestions during the two sides’ negotiations on a future-relationship agreement — a stop-start process during 2020 that was dogged by the Covid-19 pandemic and entrenched disagreements about trading conditions and fish....

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