Theresa May's government has chosen Tim Barrow, a career diplomat, to succeed Ivan Rogers as Britain's ambassador to the EU, ignoring calls to appoint a committed advocate of Brexit to the role.
A former ambassador to Moscow and a current political director at the foreign office, Sir Tim has extensive EU experience and served at the British permanent representation in Brussels during the 1990s.
Meanwhile, the British Labour Party has called on Brexit secretary David Davis to make a statement to MPs on Sir Ivan’s unexpected resignation this week, almost a year before he was due to leave Brussels.
Sir Ivan sent a farewell email to colleagues, in which he criticised “muddled thinking” in the government and suggested that Ms May had not yet worked out what her objectives were in the Brexit negotiations, which are due to start in three months.
Sir Ivan urged his colleagues to speak the truth to power and not to shy away from telling politicians unwelcome news.
Labour’s Brexit spokesman, Keir Starmer, wrote to Mr Davis on Wednesday, demanding that he come to the House of Commons next week to demonstrate that the government did have a plan for Brexit.
“It is – as I know you agree – a crucial part of our system of government that our civil service remains independent of the executive and able to give detailed, objective advice to ministers.
“There are obvious concerns – underlined by Sir Ivan’s insistence that UKRep staff continue to ‘challenge ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking and . . . never be afraid to speak the truth to those in power’ – that this principle is being undermined by the government’s current approach to Brexit negotiations,” he said.
‘Disaster’
Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs claimed that the departure of Sir Ivan, one of the most experienced EU experts in the British diplomatic service, was a disaster for the government’s Brexit negotiating strategy.
But former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith, who campaigned for Brexit, said that Sir Ivan was “not God Almighty” and suggested that ministers did not trust him.
“I think there’s a little bit of sour grapes going on here because he’s not really included much in the discussion about how they are going to go about this negotiation, partly because . . . I think ministers don’t fully trust him,” Mr Duncan Smith told Sky News.
“So, whilst I’m sorry that he chooses to resign, I think his resignation process, and the email, tells you quite a lot about the real reason he’s resigning, which is he’s probably been cut out of much of that discussion about where the negotiations will go because they’re going to be done mostly back in Downing Street.”
Mr Duncan Smith suggested that Sir Ivan may have been responsible for the leaking of a memo in which the diplomat warned that it could take up to a decade to secure a new trade deal with the EU after Brexit.
But Peter Ricketts, a former head of the foreign office, condemned the suggestion as a smear against the ambassador.
“I think there’s absolutely no evidence for that. I’m afraid that’s a bit of a smear against Ivan Rogers.
“I think it’s equally likely that it was leaked somewhere from the centre with a political motive of undermining him because he was saying things that people at the centre were not very happy about,” Lord Ricketts told the BBC.
“That’s what I mean when I say whoever is put into Brussels, ministers have got to stand behind them and defend them because officials cannot operate in this politicised environment if ministers are not prepared to stand behind them.”
