CHIEF OF STAFF: Notes From Downing Street by Gavin. Barwell

Author:Gavin. Barwell [Barwell, Gavin.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781838954123
Google: VXhCzgEACAAJ
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Published: 2021-09-15T23:26:23.633109+00:00

Brexit good, EU bad

The president was a big fan of Brexit. At Davos in January 2018, he told the prime minister, ‘You’re a great country, you shouldn’t be in a group.’ The EU hadn’t been treating the UK well in the negotiations – was there any way he could help? The prime minister asked if he could impress on them the need for a close security relationship after we had left. The president suggested he could help with the DUP, perhaps by inviting them to the Oval Office. And he reassured her, ‘We’re going to have a great trade relationship. We’re pulling back from people that haven’t treated us properly, but we’re there for you more than for anybody.’

On the face of it, this was hugely helpful – the president wanted to help, and the fact that we had other options would give us leverage in the negotiations with the EU. However, he wasn’t just supportive of the UK; he was actively hostile to the EU and keen to see other countries follow our example. At Davos, he told the prime minister that he had never liked the EU: ‘We have a horrible relationship with them – they’re worse than China.’ At the UN General Assembly in September 2018, he told her that when it came to trade, ‘the potential with you is fantastic; it may go the other way with them’ and he was keen to know if other countries would leave. During the state visit in June 2019, he suggested that commission vice-president Margrethe Vestager ‘hates the US more than anyone else alive’.

These weren’t just private views. The EU knew how he felt and there was an escalating trade war between the two sides. Trump’s desire to see other member states follow the UK’s example made Brexit more dangerous from the EU’s perspective. If the UK got too good a deal, there was a danger that the institutions they had spent sixty years building might collapse. And not only did Trump’s position harden the EU’s position, it also deprived us of a go-between. A president who enjoyed good relations with both sides might have acted as a bridge, but President Trump was neither inclined to play that role nor suited to it.

If Trump’s public support for leaving was music to Brexiteer ears, they would have found his private assessment of the situation less to their liking. The problem, he told the prime minister in September 2018, was that the EU didn’t have any downside and ‘you don’t have any cards’. So what should the UK do? His advice, which he first gave to her in September 2017, was to use his tactics and stop being reasonable. ‘Sue them for $1 trillion, $5 trillion.’

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