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I
n the Brexit saga, where many
untruths have been told, nothing
speaks more clearly than the official
photograph marking the second
day of negotiations between the
British and EU delegations in Brussels.
On the right is an all-male trio: David
Davis, the former SAS reservist and
longtime Eurosceptic bruiser elevated
to the cabinet as Brexit secretary after
the 2016 referendum. Davis is grinning
broadly alongside Olly Robbins, his
chief civil servant, and Sir Tim Barrow,
permanent representative to the EU.
(Robbins later took charge of the talks,
only to be vilified by hardline Tories for
selling out his country. He will shortly
join Goldman Sachs.)
On the EU side are two women and
one man, Michel Barnier, the Gaullist
from the Savoy Alps, a former French
foreign minister and EU commissioner.
Pen poised, the silver-haired French-
man is flanked by his deputy Sabine
Weyand and strategy chief Stephanie
Riso, each with bulging dossiers con-
spicuously absent on the British side.
Barnier combines detail with stamina.
He reminds visitors that he spent 10
years of his life preparing to deliver the
1992 Winter Olympics.
Two and a half years on, and many
recriminations later, the impression of
bluffers outmatched by hardened Euro-
crats is hard to dispel. Whatever the
final verdict on Boris Johnson’s with-
drawal deal, Brexit has been a sobering
experience for British statecraft. Heady
talk about splitting the Europeans and
isolating the Irish has come to nothing.
NowJohnson has fired the starting gun
on a general election on December 12, in
effect a referendum on leaving the EU,
the biggest shift in economic and foreign
policy in half a century.
Brexit has dominated the national
conversation, dividing families, genera-
tions and regions. We’ve had our
moments at the FT, especially on the
merits of a second referendum. Toooften the trivial has intruded: the pre-
cise date of the UK’s departure, the
interminable extensions and, lately, the
pyrotechnic posturing from Downing
Street. Above all, Brexit has been about
the past, about sins real and imagined in
Britain’s tortured relationship with
Europe. About the future, next to noth-
ing constructive has been said.Brexit has been up close and personal
for me. I spent six years as the FT’s Brus-
sels bureau chief between 1992 and- It was a life-changing experience,
a chance to document Europe’s trans-
formation after the end of the cold war:
the launch of economic and monetary
union and the prospective enlargement
of the EU to former communist coun-
tries to the east.
This month, I paid a last pre-Brexit
visit to Brussels. My host is Jean-Claude
Piris, an old friend who served for 22
years as the EU’s top lawyer. A perma-
nent presence at dozens of European
summits, he has seen everyone —
Thatcher, Kohl, Mitterrand, Blair,
Chirac, Merkel — in action.
He also knows every nook and cranny
in every EU treaty, from Maastricht to
Lisbon via Amsterdam. We agree on the
essentials. Britain’s departure from the
EU is an act of self-harm, a strategic mis-
take that will leave the UK marginalised
and the EU sorely diminished. Yet there
is scant desire in European capitals to
reverse course, still less to back a second
referendum. Mentally, people have
moved on.
Even so, Piris observes, the world has
changed since the 2016 referendum.
America under Donald Trump is overtly
hostile to the EU. Transactional diplo-
macy has supplanted alliances. Europe
finds itself squeezed between the US
and China, with a menacing Russia on
its eastern flank. Where does the UK sit?
The UK once exerted serious influ-
ence in Brussels. From Margaret
Thatcher on, the UK defended budget
discipline and free trade; it championed
enlargement to the east. “When was the
UK recently outvoted?” says Piris.
“Once, on bankers’ bonuses!”From my perch in Brussels, I wit-
nessed ministers such as the clubbable
Ken Clarke and John Gummer playing
deft hands, supported by Sir John Kerr,
Britain’s chain-smoking ambassador. In
the Maastricht treaty negotiations, Kerr
helped to secure opt-outs on monetary
union, workers’ rights and justice and
home affairs. To borrow a phrase, the
British ended up having their cake and
eating it.
Britain was the useful troublemaker,
never afraid of speaking truth to the
French and Germans, the big boys in the
club. If diplomacy is about “manipulat-
ing the antagonisms”, the British were
honest (and at times less than honest)
power brokers.
So how did it all go so badly wrong? A
starting point is Hugo Young’s bookThis
Blessed Plot, a magisterial account of
postwar British ambivalence toward
European integration. “Britain strug-
gled to reconcile the past she could not
forget with the future she could not
avoid,” he wrote.
But there is another side to the story:
the rewriting of contemporary history,
chiefly a Eurosceptic narrative wherebyDaily Telegraph (we overlapped),
Johnson gave Euroscepticism a saucy,
popular appeal. He wrote tall stories
about new regulations banning bendy
bananas. His banter about Jacques
Delors, the stiff philosopher king and
longtime president of the European
Commission, was better than most. He
was also highly competitive, once
upbraiding me for having the imperti-
nence to scoop him ahead of a summit,
forcing him to follow up on a story
which had the advantage of being true!
Johnson was never a Europhobe norContinued on page 2Britain is the victim of French-led plots
or German ambitions for hegemony on
the continent. This was true of the
Thatcher era, and the Tony Blair-
Gordon Brown years, from 1997 to 2010,
when spin-doctors fed tabloids their
pound of flesh. But the roots go deeper.Johnson cannot claim to be the found-
ing father of Euroscepticism. That title
probably goes to Enoch Powell, followed
by the Tory backwoodsman Sir William
Cash. But Johnson deserves a special
place in history, irrespective of what he
may achieve in future.
As Brussels correspondent of theThe point of departure
Lionel Barberhas reported and lived the story of Britain and Europe since a stint
in Brussels in the 1990s alongside a young Boris Johnson. As a Brexit election
looms he reflects on the rift — and why the wrangling may have just begun
Above: Martin
Parr’s portraits
of Leavers and
Remainers
demonstrating
outside the Houses
of Parliament in
London this yearBelow: delegations
led by the EU’s
Michel Barnier,
centre left, and the
UK’s David Davis,
centre right, mark
the beginning of
Brexit negotiations
in July 2017
Martin Parr / Magnum Photos; EU
Commission AFP poolBritain was the useful
troublemaker, never afraid
of speaking truth to theFrench and Germans
The beautiful onesAre these the last days of the great rock memoir?— PAGE 9
NOVEMBER 2 2019 Section:Weekend Time: 11/20191/ - 15:17 User:adrian.justins Page Name:WIN1, Part,Page,Edition:WIN, 1, 1