Michel Barnier - My Secret Brexit Diary

Michael Gove– Leading figure in the Brexit campaign and minister of state in Boris Johnson’s government, responsible for the implementation of the Withdrawal Agreement and the Protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Dominic Cummings– Leave campaigner and supporter of hard Brexit. Chief adviser to Boris Johnson when he took office as Prime Minister. Left Downing Street abruptly on 13 November 2020.

Tim Barrow– The UK’s Permanent Representative to the EU, part of the British negotiating team for four years.

Jean-Claude Juncker– President of the European Commission from November 2014 to November 2019. It was under the authority of this Luxembourgish politician that the Withdrawal Agreement and the Political Declaration setting out the framework for the future relationship between the UK and the EU were negotiated.

Ursula von der Leyen– President of the European Commission since December 2019, of German nationality. It was under her authority that the Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the UK was negotiated.

Donald Tusk– President of the European Council from December 2014 to November 2019, a Polish national. Led many of the discussions on Brexit between the EU’s other twenty-seven heads of state or government.

Charles Michel– President of the European Council since December 2019, a Belgian national. Presided over discussions between the twenty-seven heads of state or government on the future relationship between the UK and the EU.

Martin Schulz, Antonio Tajani, and David Sassoli– Successive presidents of the European Parliament from 2014 to 2021.

Guy Verhofstadt– Belgian MEP. Followed the negotiations closely on behalf of the European Parliament as chairman of the Brexit Steering Group.

Martin Selmayr– Senior European civil servant, of German nationality. Followed the negotiations with the UK very closely as Head of Cabinet to Jean-Claude Juncker and subsequently as Secretary-General of the European Commission until August 2019.

David McAllister– MEP, of German nationality. Chaired the European Parliament’s UK Coordination Group during the second round of negotiations.

Sabine Weyand– Senior European civil servant, of German nationality. Deputy Chief Negotiator for Brexit until May 2019, when she became Director-General for Trade at the European Commission.

Stéphanie Riso– Senior European civil servant, of French nationality. Director of the task force in charge of negotiations until September 2019, when she became Deputy Head of Cabinet to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Clara Martínez Alberola– Senior European civil servant, of Spanish nationality. Became EU Deputy Chief Negotiator for Brexit in January 2020. Previously Head of Cabinet to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

Paulina Dejmek Hack– Senior EU official, of dual Swedish and Czech nationality. Became director of the negotiating task force in 2019. Previously an adviser in the cabinet of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

Maroš Šefčovič– Slovak Vice-President of the European Commission. Responsible for the implementation of the Withdrawal Agreement and the Protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland.

‘I don’t like this Michel Barnier.’ So, that’s settled then!

In a lengthy profile published by Le Monde in 2018, the great British photojournalist Sir Donald McCullin explains why he voted for Brexit.* The child of a poor family, born in London’s Finsbury Park, in March 2017 McCullin was awarded a knighthood. ‘We didn’t join Europe to be strangulated, to have our sovereignty destroyed… We joined the EU for economic reasons, and for defence and security, not to be told by Brussels what I’m allowed to put in my bin.’

This fear of having pedantic regulations imposed by Brussels, regarding environmental standards for example, is nothing new. Already in 1987, Gordon Cartwright, a character from the novel The Commissioner , gin and tonic in hand, proclaimed: ‘[W]e have to clip the wings of those bureaucrats in Brussels. Clip their wings, keep them under control, don’t you agree? Fair trade and competition is one thing, but bloody-minded interference is something else altogether.’

The author of this novel, published by Arrow, is a certain … Stanley Johnson, who worked at the European Commission during the 1980s, and expressed in his book the exasperation created at the time by regulatory zeal and the desire of certain Brussels technocrats to take everything in hand and fix it all perfectly.

I took the time to read Johnson’s book as part of my ‘research’ into the reasons that drove his son Boris, along with 17,410,742 other British citizens, to vote to leave the European Union.

So can we explain the vote as a rejection of a Europe that meddles in waste sorting and imposes too many environmental constraints ‘from above’?

Quite apart from the fact that the Europe of today is far more pragmatic and efficient than that of the 1980s, there are obviously other reasons, some of which are specific to the United Kingdom.

First of all, the feeling, to quote Sir Donald again, that ‘continental Europe is another world, of which England is not a part’. Europe is too different from the UK. This island country, facing out toward the ‘open sea’, draws from its glorious past the idea that it is better to stand alone.

And then there are other reasons related to the British political system, which is strongly bipartisan, preventing the concerns of many political groups and citizens from being properly represented in the capital. It is quite natural, then, that they should see a referendum or a European Election as an opportunity to express themselves.

Finally, the UK is home to a tabloid empire that makes it its daily business to denigrate the EU with simplistic arguments and false stories. The 2016 referendum campaign was fuelled by these caricatures and untruths. For example, as soon as the result was declared, the Leave campaign acknowledged that leaving the EU would not in fact enable £350 million a week to flow back into the NHS, the UK’s health system, as promised on their famous red bus. Similarly, the image of UKIP leader Nigel Farage posing in front of a billboard depicting crowds of migrants from Syria and elsewhere on the march deserves to be remembered as the apex of cynicism and a clouding of the issues, calling to mind the outrageous propaganda caricatures of another era.

But let’s face it, such shortcomings in the public debate on Europe are not the preserve of the British alone. There are also far too many EU politicians who keep a low profile, are ashamed of Europe, make no attempt to explain anything, and fail to take responsibility. I have long been convinced that it is the silence, the arrogance and the remoteness of European elites that fuels fear and encourages demagogy.

And then there is a final, even more serious reason, which is at work in all our countries, and certainly in many regions of France. It is the feeling that Europe, its governments and its institutions, are out of touch with the legitimate concerns of the people; discontent with a Europe that does nothing to protect against the excesses of globalization, a Europe that has for too long advocated deregulation and ultra-liberalism, with insufficient regard for the social and environmental consequences.

The financial crisis of 2008 very nearly brought it all down. The crisis was the result of a caricature of liberalism and a notion of ‘pure’ or ‘perfect’ competition to which first London, and then Europe, had ended up conforming. It wrenched open great fault lines of poverty, exclusion and despair, which also go some way towards explaining the anti-European sentiment found in the UK and elsewhere.