state of the nation james blitz

You Can Go Your Own Way

My Secret Brexit Diary: A Glorious Illusion

By Michel Barnier (Translated from French by Robin Mackay)

(Polity 440pp £25)

‘Brexit’ is a taboo word in British politics these days. Boris Johnson rarely talks about it, partly because he likes to say Brexit is ‘done’ but also because, eighteen months after Britain’s departure from the EU, there are no obvious economic benefits to boast about. Keir Starmer rarely mentions it because he doesn’t want to be painted as an unreconstructed, moaning Remainer. The British public, meanwhile, is sick of the topic. The years following the 2016 Brexit referendum plunged UK politics into a political quagmire and voters would sooner discuss something else.

One person is perfectly happy to expand on the subject, however, and that is Michel Barnier, who led the EU in its negotiations over Britain’s exit. For Barnier, a French centreright politician now running as a presidential candidate, those five years of talks were often exhausting and frustrating, and involved much time away from his family. But as this diary convincingly demonstrates, the Brexit negotiation was, from the EU’s perspective, a diplomatic triumph in which Barnier’s calm, astute approach was exemplary.

Barnier’s memoir, now published in English, is called My Secret Brexit Diary. The title promises lots of revelations and tales of behind-the-scenes skulduggery. But nothing here will come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the Brexit negotiations. The best political diaries (those of Richard Crossman and Alan Clark) feel like they have been freely dictated into a tape recorder late at night after several drinks. Barnier’s offering is the opposite: considered, polished and dry – rather like the man himself.

This book has value, though, because it demonstrates how utterly different the EU

and UK approaches to the Brexit negotiation were at every level. At the Brussels end, the negotiation was orderly and well structured from the start, while Britain’s was shambolic, driven by ideology and slogans. Barnier chooses as his epigraph a line from King Lear: ‘Beat at this gate and let thy folly in,/And thy dear judgement out!’ That’s what he thinks of the British role in this story, and frankly it’s easy to see why.

The long goodbye: Barnier (right) with David Davis, 2018

Immediately after being appointed to his role, Barnier recognised that the negotiation would be ‘a hard-fought game’ and that the defining matter was which of the two sides would be first to fragment and turn in on itself. On one side were the twenty-seven EU member states, whom the British were desperate to divide and conquer. Barnier realised that he must secure the unity of the twenty-seven. Much of his memoir sees him travelling the Continent to do so.

The task wasn’t easy. On an early visit to Poland, the most nationalist and Eurosceptic of the member states, he finds the foreign minister furious that the Barnier team contains no Poles. Barnier cites the name of one official who is Polish. The minister isn’t impressed: ‘She’s an international civil servant, she’s not Polish.’ But difficulties like this are soon overcome and Barnier quickly establishes the principles on which the negotiation must be conducted. The main one is that the two sides must first settle the matter of the ‘divorce’ (in particular Britain’s financial debts to the EU) and only then move on to deciding the future trade relationship. The UK rails against this but Barnier is determined never to lose his cool, knowing this will send the London tabloids into uncontrollable fury. ‘Keep calm and negotiate’ is his mantra.

The Conservative government was, from the start, internally divided on Brexit policy and never sure what it wanted to achieve. In her Lancaster House speech in January 2017, Theresa May set out a maximalist position, declaring that she did not want the UK to be part of any EU structures in future or hold on to bits of EU membership. Barnier realises this is unsustainable: ‘I am astounded by the sheer number of doors she is closing here, one after the other.’

Having taken such a position, May found her cabinet totally at loggerheads. In April 2017, Barnier writes, ‘The British are talking amongst themselves, as they did throughout the referendum campaign.’ And so they go on for the rest of her premiership. Indeed, the British become so confused that they cannot say for sure who Barnier’s counterpart is: is it David Davis, the Brexit minister, or Olly Robbins, May’s chief civil servant for Brexit? ‘I don’t want to spend any longer discussing who will represent the UK in this negotiation,’ Barnier sighs in July of that year.

The chief disappointment here is that the calm, diplomatic approach Barnier adopted for the negotiation is also the tone of the diary. He might have compensated for the lack of revelations by providing some lively pen portraits of the players in this negotiation, but he is restrained throughout. Despite his criticism of May’s tactics, for example, Barnier speaks of his deep respect for her (‘she is a courageous and tenacious woman surrounded by a great many men who are more interested in their personal

Literary Review | october 2021 8