The great illusion: how Brexit got done

Books reviewed:

My Secret Brexit Diary: A Glorious Illusion

Michel Barnier (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2021), 439 pp. ISBN: 978-1-5095-5086-9 (hardback)

Inside the Deal: How the EU got Brexit Done

Stefaan De Rynck (Newcastle upon Tyne, Agenda Publishing, 2023), 260 pp. ISBN: 978-1-78821-568-8 (hardback)

These two books, by Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, and Stefaan De Rynck, a member of his negotiating team, complement one another well. They remind the reader of the enormity of Brexit and the sheer complexity of the task. In due course, other accounts and analyses may emerge although it is doubtful whether there will ever be a similar account published by the UK side, especially now that it has become increasingly clear that the UK gave up a very great deal for so very little in return.

Barnier, a former French Minister and European Commissioner, was languishing in relative obscurity as a special adviser on European defence policy to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker when, on 23 June 2016, the UK voted to leave the European Union (EU). On 27 July of that same year, Juncker appointed Barnier to be the Commission’s chief Brexit negotiator, arguing that he needed an experienced politician for such a complex task. It was surely Juncker’s most inspired decision.

A richly experienced, meticulously conscientious, never less than courteous politician out of the top drawer of old-style French politics, Barnier took to his task like a fish to water. He gathered a crack team of EU civil servants about him and trusted them implicitly. Consensus building, such an important imperative in the Brexit negotiations, came naturally to him, as he exploited old political friendships and acquaintanceships (German Chancellor Angela Merkel, for example, had been a fellow agriculture minister in the 1990s) and his undeniable EU credentials and faith (in addition to everything else, he had served as a Vice-President of the European People’s Party for five years) in order to build trust, and ensure a united front and common resolve. He carried out his task with such indefatigable aplomb and patience (he only once raised his voice, and then to insist that he was calm! De Rynck, p. 243) that he made it look easy. These two books show how and why it was anything but.

Barnier’s ‘secret’ Brexit diary is an almost day-by-day, blow-by-blow account of the negotiations as they were proceeding, with all the advantages and disadvantages of such an immediate point of view (albeit with some retrospective editorialising). Barnier’s articles of faith are established in the introduction: for example, the 2004 wave of accessions to the EU was a ‘great moment of reunification of the European continent’ (p.4, my emphasis) as opposed to a new development. Despite such orthodoxies, Barnier’s shrewd understanding of the partial origins of Brexit is apparent in his last (21 February 2021) entry, when he argues that: ‘We will have to be vigilant to avoid a return to habit, certainty and arrogance in Brussels … there are lessons to be learned from Brexit. There are reasons to listen to the popular feeling that was expressed then and is still being expressed in so many parts of Europe.’ (p. 405).

It was this shrewd understanding, combined with Barnier’s long-standing respect for the British and his unyielding courtesy that made him such an effective chief negotiator. Even though he fundamentally disagreed with his negotiating partners, he always understood, empathised with, and respected them (though his exasperation with their tactics and British topsy-turvy politics can occasionally be read between the lines). Moreover, Barnier was always respectful of the democratic decisions (the 2016 referendum and the 2017 UK General Election in particular) that made it so difficult for the then British Prime Minister, Theresa May, and her negotiators.

Clearly, Barnier respected May, understanding that: ‘For her, this is not really a negotiation with the European Union but (a) far more intense negotiation, on an almost hourly basis, with her own ministers and her own majority.’ (p. 147) Indeed, one of the great counterfactuals of this sorry cautionary tale is what might have happened to May’s attempts at a bespoke economic relationship if she had, as Barnier expected, won a larger majority in 2017. Instead, though, it was Johnson who won the parliamentary majority in December 2019 that in large part enabled a deal to be done (although the EU could also afford to be more flexible because of Johnson’s primary emphasis on sovereignty—De Rynck, p. 243).

All the same, Barnier and his team had frequently to deal with confrontational tactics, from no deal and suspension threats through to what Johnson memorably described as ‘throwing a dead cat on the table’ (Barnier, pp. 350–351). Time and again, Barnier and De Rynck write about their puzzlement at the tactics of Johnson and his chief negotiator, David Frost, who seemed, from their point of view, to be wasting time and failing to engage, putting confrontational tactics before constructive strategy (my words). They also lost the UK the trust that was crucial to negotiating concessions, although the ‘cakeism’ approach Johnson adopted publicly seemed wilfully to ignore the obvious fact that the EU’s remaining member states could never accept that a third country, whether a former member state or not, might enjoy the same privileges and access as they enjoyed.

But the negotiations with the UK were only the half of it. Barnier also had to carry all 27 of the member states (some of them, like Poland, initially suspicious and possibly vulnerable to bilateral approaches) and all the institutions (including the European Central Bank, which at one stage almost distractedly entered into bilateral talks with the Bank of England, which would have sacrificed the sacrosanct common front—Barnier, p. 130). Barnier had also to deal with disruption within, though he is mostly politely circumspect about the not-always-helpful machinations of Juncker’s head of staff, Martin Selmayr.

Into the mix should also be added the complicating fact that in early 2020 both Boris Johnson and Michel Barnier succumbed to Covid-19—the former falling seriously ill and being hospitalised. In-person negotiations between the two teams were seriously curtailed for a long time. Basically, as his diary details, Barnier and his team spent a massive amount of time and effort cultivating the sort of solid trust and confidence that could underpin the united front that would confront Theresa May and later Boris Johnson.

Stefaan De Rynck was a senior member of Barnier’s team and in Inside the Deal he describes in a more analytical fashion the negotiation processes that led, sequentially, to the Withdrawal Agreement, the Northern Ireland Protocol and the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA). De Rynck is more reflective about the processes involved and the strategies and tactics adopted by the two sides. Indeed, Inside the Deal can be seen as a sort of ‘How to’ manual: for the EU side, how to handle the next Article 50 exit (not that there will be one—even the more recalcitrant member states have learned from the UK experience that it’s cold out there); for the UK side, how not to have handled Brexit. As De Rynck cogently argues, negotiators must be clear about what they want from negotiations, not just what they don’t want. Objectives should be agreed upon with all parties. Trust should be built up.

None of that occurred in the UK. Instead, May allowed herself to be jumped into triggering Article 50 and accepting sequencing (divorce deal first, future relationship talks afterwards) before she and her government had even the beginnings of an established position on what they wanted (‘Brexit means Brexit’ was never anything more than a vapid tautology) and, to Barnier’s incredulity, already in her January 2017 Lancaster House speech, she did ‘nothing less than set out her red lines in their entirety, even though we have not yet opened negotiations.’ (p. 34).

Both books’ subtitles send messages. The French title of Barnier’s diary was La Grand Illusion, a reference to Jean Renoir’s 1927 celebrated war film about a group of French prisoners-of-war. The film’s title was taken, in turn, from The Great Illusion, a 1909 book by British journalist Norman Angell, who argued against the futility of war and for the common interests of all European countries. De Rynck’s subtitle, on the other hand, is a riposte to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s rambunctious 2019 General Election campaign, with its images of boxing gloves and bulldozers and the overarching slogan, ‘Get Brexit Done’. Of course, it was Johnson who got the deal through the UK parliament, just as it was the European Commission that got the deal through the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union. But the TCA was, basically, a Treaty drafted by the EU’s negotiators.

Speaking in 2016, former European Council President Herman Van Rompuy described Brexit as a ‘political amputation’. To borrow the metaphor, De Rynck writes with the fierce and exhausted pride of a member of a crack team of surgeons who have just successfully carried out a highly complex operation for the very first time. Barnier writes more with the sad view of a hospital governor who knows that amputations may sometimes be necessary but are never a good thing and that, in this particular case, amputation almost certainly could, and should, have been avoided.

Both books are pervaded with a wistful air, and both are good on the sheer human atmospherics. De Rynck, for example, provides a poignant description of the Commission’s Brexit team on Christmas Eve, 2020, when the TCA deal was finally reached (so late primarily because of British down-to-the-wire tactics). Barnier’s legal experts had worked through the night of 23rd December and some were still there at close to midnight on the 24th. Barnier spent Christmas Eve preparing his presentation of the results to an extraordinary Coreper meeting held at 11 a.m. on Christmas Day:

‘It was a fitting end to three-and-a-half years of extraordinary efforts by EU officials to get Brexit done. Cancelling holidays and missing concerts, weddings and birthday parties since 2017 preceded a gloomy 2020 Christmas in the Berlaymont, at the service of a Brexit project which none of them considered to be beneficial, neither for the UK nor for the EU.’ (p. 240).

Indeed, as both books make plain, Brexit could never be anything other than a lose-lose situation.

Martin Westlake

is a Visiting Professor at the European Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science and at the College of Europe, Bruges.