Key figures involved in the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union (Brexit) have come forward to describe the process as a black comedy of errors.
Among them, Former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, who claimed then Prime Minister, Theresa May ruled out membership of the Single Market after Brexit without any real understanding of what it would entail.
Mr Hammond’s interview is one of a number given to the research body, UK In a Changing Europe, which is recording the perspectives of key players in Brexit’s troubled development.
Another interviewee, former Permanent Secretary of the now defunct Department for Exiting the European Union, Philip Rycroft ( pictured) revealed that not only did the Public Service have a shortage of senior leaders with deep expertise in the EU, the specialists it did have were kept out of key roles.
Mr Rycroft said that neither he, nor his predecessor at the Department, Olly Robbins, had significant experience of dealing with the EU.
“In part this was a product of decades of failure of the British Civil Service to build up the reputation — the kudos, if you like — of being someone who was an expert in handling European business,” Mr Rycroft said.
“There ought to have been, at the senior level, far more folk across Government who could have come into that space with the background and knowledge and, indeed, the connections and the relationships, to be able to get going from day one,” he said.
Mr Rycroft also suggested that Europe experts who did exist were kept out of leading Brexit jobs “because their track record of working with the EU would have been seen by Brexiteers as evidence that they were covert Remainers”.
“This portrays the huge misunderstanding of the Civil Service and of the sort of challenge we were going to have — because this was going to be the biggest bloody negotiation the UK has ever embarked on,” the former Permanent Secretary said.
Mr Rycroft said that in his view, the UK’s handling of Brexit was weakened by the failure early on to make and win the argument that Public Servants could, no matter their previous relationship with the EU, serve Ministers impartially to deliver their goals.
London, 17 February 2021
