The ghosts of Brexit have come back to haunt politics over the past two weeks. Key players in that saga from British prime minister Keir Starmer and UK civil service mandarin Olly Robbins to top EU official Sabine Weyand have returned to the headlines, all acting in character as foreshadowed by their Brexit roles.
The lack of vision combined with ruthlessness which has characterised Starmer’s premiership was on early display during the Brexit process when he played an important role in torpedoing efforts to get a deal that would have kept the UK in the closest possible relationship with the EU.
While researching my book Ireland’s Call: How Brexit Got Done, I was surprised to discover that despite his alleged support for continuing close relations with the EU, Starmer played a decisive role in ensuring that the Labour Party voted down all Theresa May’s efforts to achieve a compromise deal.
The end result was that the anti-EU forces in the Conservative Party gained the upper hand, forced May’s resignation and set the UK on course for leaving the EU customs union and single market. It also resulted in Boris Johnson crushing the Labour Party in the 2019 general election.
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Gavin Barwell, who was May’s chief of staff, provides a vivid picture of the political manoeuvring in the summer of 2019 when the moderates in the Conservative government tried to enlist the support of Labour to defeat the anti-EU ideologues.
Michael Gove, who led the talks with Labour, told colleagues “Keir Starmer was harder to please than anybody he ever met”, including the Eurosceptic Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
Barwell wrote that the collapse of the talks with Labour killed off the last chance of a compromise Brexit. It spelled the end for May and ensured that her successor would be a hard Brexiteer. “Jeremy Corbyn wanted to do it but Keir Starmer stopped it – it seems fitting that he is now dealing with the consequences,” wrote Barwell in 2021.
Starmer’s logic for opposing compromise with the Tories back in 2019 was based on the crude political calculation that Labour could force the government out of office. Part of the calculation proved right. May was forced to resign but only to be replaced by Johnson who proceeded to call an early election and wipe the floor with Labour.
In pursuit of short-term party political advantage Starmer sacrificed the UK’s national interest in maintaining a close trading relationship with the EU. When he replaced Corbyn after the election disaster of 2019 he set his face against any attempt to modify Brexit and led his party into the 2024 general election on the basis that the UK would not attempt to rejoin the single market or the customs union.
In office he has again changed tack on the EU as he drifted from one U-turn to the next. His one consistent policy has been a positive attitude to this country and ensuing improvement in Irish/British relations since he took office.
His brutal sacking of Olly Robbins was the mark of a desperate man who refuses to take responsibility for his own mistakes. By contrast with Starmer, Robbins fought might and main as head of the UK Brexit department a decade ago to get the best possible deal for his country.
Ireland’s lead negotiator John Callinan and the top EU official Sabine Weyand had enormous respect for Robbins. “We had a good professional relationship and got on well and understood each other well, which I think mattered a lot,” said Callinan.
Robbins’s reward for trying to protect his country’s interests as best he could was to be fired by Boris Johnson, who wanted a no-deal Brexit. After a stint in the private sector he returned to the civil service last January only to be made a scapegoat for Starmer’s disastrous decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to Washington a month earlier.
Hot on the heels of the latest developments in the UK Weyand was back in the headlines with the announcement that she was leaving her job as head of the European Commission’s powerful trade department after seven years. The move came after she publicly contradicted European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s view that the trade agreement struck with the US last year was compatible with global trade rules.
Weyand was probably the most influential figure in the entire Brexit process. She was diligent in protecting Ireland’s as well as the wider EU interests and devised the withdrawal agreement that left the UK agreeing to pay a huge bill to the EU as the price of future trade access.
Her reward was to be appointed EU trade boss and during the past year she clinched the long-delayed Mercosur deal with Latin American countries as well as deals with India and Australia. Her refusal to indulge her fellow German, von der Leyen’s, optimistic description of the EU/US trade deal was typical of her honesty and steeliness.
It is ironic that two of the most impressive officials in the Brexit saga have been sacrificed by their political bosses, who live on to fight another day.
