Boris Johnson’s suggestion he could use the threat of no deal to win an improved Brexit deal for the UK risks falling on deaf ears in Brussels, the EU’s top negotiator has suggested.
Michel Barnier suggested, in an interview carried out in May for the BBC Panorama programme, that Theresa May’s negotiating team never tried to use the spectre of a no-deal Brexit despite calls from Tory hardliners to do so.
He said: “I think that the UK side, which is well informed and competent and knows the way we work on the EU side, knew from the very beginning that we’ve never been impressed by such a threat.”
Barnier added: “It’s not useful to use it.”
The UK would “have to face the consequences” of walking away without a deal, he said, adding the deal May negotiated was the only option that would allow “an orderly” exit.
The comments will place the spotlight on Johnson’s repeated promises to use the tactic if he becomes prime minister and takes charge of Brexit talks.
Johnson said earlier this month: “We were pretty much ready on 29 March. And we will be ready by 31 October. And it’s vital that our partners see that. They have to look deep into our eyes and think: ‘my god, these Brits actually are going to leave. And they’re going to leave on those terms.’”
In another interview for Panorama, the European commission’s vice-president, Frans Timmermans, expressed amazement at the lack of preparedness of the UK negotiators when they arrived in Brussels for the first talks.
“We thought they are so brilliant,” he said in comments recorded in March. “That in some vault somewhere in Westminster there will be a Harry Potter-like book with all the tricks and all the things in it to do.”
He said he changed his mind after seeing the then Brexit secretary David Davis.
Timmermans said: “I saw him not coming, not negotiating, grandstanding elsewhere [and] I thought, ‘Oh my God, they haven’t got a plan, they haven’t got a plan.’
“That was really shocking, frankly, because the damage if you don’t have a plan …”
May’s de facto deputy David Lidington told Panorama that the commission offered to put the Brexit process on ice for five years and “see how things go”.
Lidington said the offer was made in 2018 by Martin Selmayr, an aide to the commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker. “Martin sort of said, ‘Look, why don’t we have a deal whereby we just put all this on ice for five years?’
“Let’s see how things go, let’s get the UK involved with France and Germany, let’s see how the dust settles and let’s talk about whether we can come to a new deal for Europe.’”
Selmayr told Panorama that he was “very certain” the UK was not in a position to leave without a deal in March this year. He said: “We have seen what has been prepared on our side of the border for a hard Brexit. We don’t see the same level of preparation on the other side of the border.”
“You would have to establish a lot of authorities in the United Kingdom that you don’t have at this moment in time so I think the European Union have been very well prepared for that – we could live with a hard Brexit.
“We don’t think the same level of preparation is there on the UK side.”