A word of advice for anyone who has worked hard to acquire a reputation they cherish: if Boris Johnson approaches, if he comes anywhere near, run a mile. Richard Sharp is the latest proof that, even out of office, Johnson continues to act as reputational napalm, laying waste to careers and turning good names bad.
Sharp joins a long list that includes Christopher Geidt, who had the poison task of serving as Johnson’s adviser on ethics; Allegra Stratton, whom the former prime minister said had “sickened” him when she joked about a party in Downing Street, even though he had attended several himself; and the one-time rising star civil servant and current cabinet secretary, Simon Case, quoted this week as having said of Johnson, “I don’t know what more I can do to stand up to a prime minister who lies”. Each entered Johnson’s circle as a respected figure; each was diminished by their contact with the reverse Midas, the man who rots everything he touches.
One question left by Sharp’s resignation as chair of the BBC is: what took him so long? He hardly needed to wait for today’s report by Adam Heppinstall KC, with its verdict that Sharp’s failure to disclose his role in brokering an £800,000 loan arrangement for Johnson represented “a breach of the governance code”, to know that he could not possibly continue in a job whose defining duty is to maintain the independence of the BBC. As the former director general John Birt said a month ago, Sharp was “unsuitable” for the role, thanks to “navigating a loan for the prime minister at exactly the same time as applying for the job at the BBC. It’s the cosiness of that arrangement that made it unsuitable, and I wish the cabinet secretary had called it out.” (The cabinet secretary being Case, serially Midased by Johnson.)
According to those inside the BBC, Sharp had been a capable chair. But the manner of his appointment meant he could never do the job properly. Witness last month’s row over Gary Lineker’s tweet, aimed at Suella Braverman’s language on migrants. That was a moment when you might expect the chair to lead from the front, publicly explaining either why impartiality is central to the BBC’s mission or why it was vital that the BBC not succumb to government pressure – or both. Instead, Sharp was mute and invisible, too hopelessly compromised as the man who had helped bail out a fiscally incontinent Tory prime minister to say a word.
It’s baffling that all of this did not occur to Sharp himself long ago – including right at the start, when he submitted his job application and was required to identify any conflicts, or perceived conflicts, of interest. The fact that he didn’t mention his role in the Johnson loan, even though he had discussed the issue with Case, suggests he knew that it looked bad – that it would give rise to the “perception that Mr Sharp would not be independent from the former prime minister, if appointed,” as Heppinstall puts it. Given he knew the importance of perceived, as well as actual, neutrality for the BBC, that silence was itself disqualifying.
‘Many have been diminished by their contact with Boris Johnson the reverse Midas, the man who rots everything he touches.’ Photograph: Charles McQuillan/PA
His grudging resignation statement suggests the penny has still not dropped. Dominic Raab may have started a fashion for passive-aggressive Friday departures, because Sharp was insistent that his breach of the rules was “inadvertent and not material”. Still, he invited our admiration for his decision “to prioritise the interests of the BBC” since “this matter may well be a distraction from the corporation’s good work were I to remain in post”. Er, yes, just a bit. Again, if preventing a distraction was Sharp’s concern, he should have gone the moment this story broke. As it is, he’s left multiple questions still to answer – including whether Johnson should not have recused himself from the appointment process on the grounds that he had an egregious conflict of interest, given that he knew Sharp had helped him out with the loan.
What’s needed now is not just a new BBC chair, but a new way of doing things. Even if he hadn’t got involved in Johnson’s personal finances, Sharp was hardly a non-partisan figure. He is a longtime, high-value donor to the Tory party, to the tune of £400,000. True, political parties, Labour included, have been appointing allies and chums to this role since the 1960s, but that practice needs to stop. Lineker distilled the case nicely: “The BBC chairman should not be selected by the government of the day. Not now, not ever.”
This goes wider than the BBC: there’s a slew of public jobs that might appear to be independently appointed, but that are quietly filled on the nod, or whim, of Downing Street. But it’s with the BBC that independence matters acutely. To understand why, look across the Atlantic.
This week’s announcement by Joe Bidenthat he will seek a second term had to fight for media attention with the firing of Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson. That’s because Carlson had become second only to Donald Trump in influence over the Republican party, able to make senior elected officials and aspirant presidential candidates bend to his agenda and ideological obsessions – even when mainstreaming previously fringe, and racist, ideas like the “great replacement theory”, with its claim of a deliberate, if shadowy, plot to replace white Americans with a more diverse and pliant electorate.
Fox News itself, with its repeated amplification of the big lie of a stolen election, is partly responsible for why nearly two-thirds of Republican voters do not believe a demonstrable fact: namely, that Biden won office in a free and fair contest in 2020. Today’s America is a land of epistemic tribalism: knowledge is not shared across the society, but rather dependent on political affiliation. There are red state facts and blue state facts, and which you believe comes down to which media you consume – which social media accounts you follow, which TV networks you watch.
In Britain, there have been efforts to lead us down that gloomy path. There are partisan, polemical TV channels now, desperate to do to Britain what Fox has done to America. And Johnson was Trumpian in his contempt for the truth, determined to create a world of Brexit facts that would exist in opposition to the real one. But if those efforts have largely failed – and if Johnson was eventually undone by his lies – that is partly down to the stubborn persistence in this country of a source of information that is regarded by most people as, yes, flawed and, yes, inconsistent, but broadly reliable and fair. Trust levels in the BBC are not what they were, and that demands urgent attention, but it is striking nonetheless that, according to a Reuters Institute study, aside from local news, BBC News is the most trusted news brand in the US. It seems that in an intensely polarised landscape, people thirst for a non-partisan source.
The BBC should be defended – and that process starts with governments treating it as the publicly funded broadcaster it is, rather than the state broadcaster some wrongly imagine it to be. That means giving up the power to pick its boss – and getting politicians out of the way. The BBC is a precious thing – so precious, we might not fully appreciate it until it’s gone.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Richard Sharp has resigned as BBC chair after he breached the rules on public appointments by failing to declare his connection to a secret £800,000 loan made to Boris Johnson.
Sharp quit on Friday morning after concluding his continued presence at the BBC “may well be a distraction from the corporation’s good work”.
An investigation by the UK commissioner of public appointments concluded Sharp had broken the rules by failing to declare his link to Johnson’s loan, creating a “potential perceived conflict of interest”.
The investigation also found that Johnson – when he was prime minister – had personally approved Sharp’s appointment as BBC chair, while the individuals running the supposedly independent recruitment process for the job had already been informed that Sharp was the only candidate whom the government would support.
Although this breach of the rules does not necessarily invalidate an appointment, Sharp said his position was no longer tenable and he had to quit. He intends to step down at a board meeting in June, at which point an acting chair will be appointed. Rishi Sunak’s government will then start recruitment process to find a full-time successor.
Earlier this year, the Sunday Times revealed that Sharp had secretly helped an acquaintance, Sam Blyth, who wanted to offer an £800,000 personal loan guarantee for Johnson. The prime minister’s personal finances were in poor shape while he was in Downing Street with his new wife, Carrie, and baby son, and was going through an expensive divorce.
Sharp decided to introduce Blyth to Simon Case, the head of the civil service, so they could discuss a potential loan. But the BBC chair insists he took no further role and there is no evidence “to say I played any part whatsoever in the facilitation, arrangement, or financing of a loan for the former prime minister”.
He added that he did not realise he had to declare the introduction during the recruitment process for the BBC job, saying: “I have always maintained the breach was inadvertent.”
It is still not known who ultimately provided Johnson with the loan, which became public only after he left office.
Sharp’s resignation comes at a tricky time for the BBC, which has been hit by criticisms it has become too close to the Conservative government – and faces questions over whether it has been too heavily influenced by ministers.
Labour’s Lucy Powell said the incident had “caused untold damage to the reputation of the BBC and seriously undermined its independence as a result of the Conservatives’ sleaze and cronyism”.
She added: “Rishi Sunak should urgently establish a truly independent and robust process to replace Sharp to help restore the esteem of the BBC after his government has tarnished it so much.”
The investigation into Sharp’s appointment was particularly damning on the way the application process for the job was handled. Other candidates were put off from putting forward their names for the BBC job by the perception it was already lined for Sharp. Government-friendly media outlets were briefed that Sharp was the government’s preferred candidate for the job before the application window had even closed.
“Leaks and briefing to the press of ‘preferred candidates’ for public appointments (referred to as ‘pre-briefing’) should be prohibited by ministers,” the report concluded. “In this case such pre-briefing may well have discouraged people from applying for this role. It can also undermine efforts made to increase diversity.”
MPs had already criticised Sharp, a financier and Tory donor, for “significant errors of judgment” in failing to declare the potential conflict of interest.
Sharp told MPs he had been attending a private dinner at Blyth’s house in September 2020 when the Canadian businessman said he had read reports that Johnson was in “some difficulties” and that he wanted to help. Sharp said he had warned Blyth about the ethical complexities of this.
At the time, Sharp was working in Downing Street on Covid projects, and told Johnson and Sunak of his aim to be BBC chair. He told the culture, media and sport committee in February: “I communicated to the prime minister and to the chancellor that I wished to apply and submitted my application in November.”
The government will now be able to select a new BBC chair on a four-year term, depriving a potential Labour government of making its own appointment until late 2027.
The part-time position involves overseeing the BBC’s operations and managing relationships with the government.
In his resignation statement, Sharp said that “for all its complexities, successes, and occasional failings, the BBC is an incredible, dynamic, and world-beating creative force, unmatched anywhere”.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
London: BBC Chairman Richard Sharp resigned on Friday over a report into whether he failed to properly disclose his involvement in the facilitation of a loan to former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Barrister Adam Heppinstall was appointed by the Commissioner of Public Appointments to investigate the claims which had first appeared in the Sunday Times, says the BBC.
Confirming his resignation, Sharp said the report, which was published on Friday, found “that while I did breach the governance code for public appointments, he states that a breach does not necessarily invalidate an appointment”.
He said the report finds he did not play “any part whatsoever in the facilitation, arrangement, or financing of a loan for the former Prime Minister”.
But he said with hindsight he should have disclosed his role in setting up a meeting between Cabinet Secretary Simon Case and Sam Blyth — a businessman who was offering the then PM financial help — to the appointments panel during the scrutiny process ahead of him taking up the senior role.
BREAKING: BBC chairman Richard Sharp resigns following an investigation into his appointment to the role after he helped facilitate a loan guarantee for Boris Johnson pic.twitter.com/qDgk2zNCvX
Sharp said not doing so was an “oversight” and apologised for it.
In a statement, he said he did not want to be a “distraction”, adding that it had been an honour to chair the BBC.
He will remain in post until June until a successor is appointed.
In response to his resignation, the BBC board said: “We accept and understand Richard’s decision to stand down. We want to put on record our thanks to Richard, who has been a valued and respected colleague, and a very effective chairman of the BBC.
“The BBC board believes that Richard Sharp is a person of integrity.”
The board added that Sharp had a been a “real advocate for the BBC, its mission, and why the corporation is a priceless asset for the country, at home and abroad”.
Sharp, a former banker, was appointed as Chairman of the BBC on February 10, 2021. He previously worked at JP Morgan for eight years, and then for 23 years at Goldman Sachs.
Boris Johnson’s political career ended on Wednesday, with stuttering and fake politesse.
Seated before a U.K. House of Commons committee poised to rule on whether he lied to parliament about Partygate, Johnson was far from his element. Beneath the ghost of his famous bonhomie and the half-conceived rhetoric, I saw anger segueing to bafflement: A man who has been forgiven all his life, now unforgiven. He should rewatch the original “House of Cards:” nothing lasts forever.
If Johnson once coasted on the times, now he is cursed by them. Britain has a new seriousness and a new PM: In politics, a bookie is followed by a bishop, to borrow the journalist Malcolm Muggeridge’s famous phrase. (I’m not including Liz Truss, who is owed a special category of her own.)
Johnson may be suspended from parliament if the committee finds against him, and he may then lose his seat. The classicist in him will understand: He is most in danger from his friends. The committee’s Tory questioners were more savage, but they have been more deeply betrayed. He is an embarrassment now. They will throw him overboard for a percentage point. When the committee paused for a vote, he led a rebellion against the government on the Windsor Framework, Rishi Sunak’s solution to Johnson’s own Brexit deal. Only 22 out of 354 Tory MPs followed him. This is how he departs.
The hearing took place in a dull room with expensive furniture that looked cheap and a mad mural of leaves in his eye line. Johnson isn’t in politics for dull rooms: He’s in it to ride his motorbike around Chequers.
Harriet Harman, the Labour MP and Mother of the House, was in the chair wearing black, as precise as Johnson is chaotic, with a necklace that looked like a chain. Was it metaphor? Harman has spent her career supporting female parliamentarians. Then a man who said voting Tory would give wives bigger breasts won an 80-seat majority in 2019. But that was a whole pandemic ago.
Johnson was there to defend himself against the charge that he repeatedly lied to parliament when he said guidance was followed in No. 10. His strategy was distraction: obscuration, and repetition, and sentences that tripped along ring roads, going nowhere.
He has never been so boring: No one listening ever wants to hear the word “guidance” again. If the ability to inflict boredom was his defense, it was also his destruction. Johnson is supposed to be a seducer with a fascinating narrative arc ― one of his campaign videos aped the film “Love Actually” ― not a bore. But needs must. The fascination was thrown overboard.
He swore to tell the truth on a fawn-colored Bible, but he did not look at it. He rocked on his heels. He has had a haircut: As ever, his hair emotes for him. The mop, so redolent of Samson ― he would muss it before big speeches, to disguise that he cared ― is a sullen bowl now. He looked haunted. Lord Pannick, his lawyer, smiled behind him. His resting face is a smile, and he needed it.
Johnson told Harman there would soon be a Commons vote, as if she, Mother of the House, didn’t know. She said she would suspend proceedings for the vote, and he talked over her with a flurry of thanks. He thanked her four times. He didn’t mean it.
He read a statement: “I’m here to say to you, hand on heart, that I did not lie to the House.” He made a fist, and placed his hand on his chest where his heart isn’t: on the right-hand side. He said there was a near-universal belief in No. 10 that the guidance was followed, and that is why he said so to the House.
He shuffled his papers, as handsome Bernard Jenkin, a Tory, began the questioning with exaggerated gravity, to indicate that the Tories are through with levity. He reminded Johnson that he had regularly said “hands, face, space” while standing behind podiums that also said, “hands, face, space,” which indicated he understand the guidance.
People sit in the Red Lion pub in London as former Prime Minister Boris Johnson giving evidence on Partygate is shown on the TV | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
They discussed the leaving party of Lee Cain, Johnson’s former director of communications. There were 15-20 people there, Jenkin reminded him, you gave a speech. Johnson said guidance was followed, at least while he was there. Jenkin pressed him. “I don’t accept that people weren’t making an effort to distance themselves socially from each other,” Johnson said, while we gazed at a photograph of people standing next to each other. And this was how it was for 300 minutes: We were invited to ignore the evidence of our own eyes, even asthey chilled with boredom.
Johnson insisted: “It was necessary because two senior members of staff were about to leave the building in pretty acrimonious circumstances. It was important for me to be there and to give reassurance.” This fits the Johnson myth. He was there for morale, while others governed, because that’s boring. I am not sure that the leaving party of a press aide is a matter of state, but Johnson always lived for headlines. Even so, he pleaded: We had sanitizers, we kept windows open, we had Zoom meetings, we had Perspex screens between desks, we had regular testing ― way beyond what the guidance advised!
“If you had said all that at the time to the House of Commons, we probably wouldn’t be sitting here,” said Jenkin mildly, even sympathetically, and that’s when I knew it was over. Tories are awfully like characters from “The Godfather” sometimes: murderers come with smiles. “But you didn’t.”
Jenkin read the guidance to him: “You must maintain social distancing in the workplace wherever possible.” “The business of the government had to be carried on!” Johnson cried. “That is what I had to do!” No one replied: “It was Lee Cain’s leaving do, you maniac.”
On it went, trench warfare. Johnson didn’t seem to understand that he wasn’t describing an absence of law-breaking, but a culture of it. In his wine-filled wood, he couldn’t see a tree. Committee members suggested he breached the guidance. He said he didn’t ― and if it should have been obvious to him that he was breaching it, it should have been obvious to Rishi Sunak too. They asked him why he didn’t take proper advice when talking to the House. (Because he trusted the press office. His people. Lawyers aren’t his people.)
Bernard Jenkin said: “I put it to you, Mr. Johnson, that you did not take proper advice.” Johnson’s thumb stroked his other thumb. He exploded with tangents, and eventually half-shouted: “This is nonsense, I mean complete nonsense!” Lord Pannick’s smile slid down his face. He blinked.
I would like to say this is the last gasp for Johnson’s faux-aristocratic style, with its entitlement and its pseudo-intellectualism, but his danger was ever in his precedent. It is always pleasing when a narcissist is exposed, and by himself, but there will be another one along soon enough. I wonder if its hair will have its own cuttings file.
Amid his word salad, Johnson told Harman she had said things that were “plainly and wrongly prejudicial, or prejudge the very issue you are adjudicating.” She told him the assurances he used to inform parliament had been “flimsy.” Finally, he said he’d much enjoyed the day. (He lied.) The question, as ever with Johnson, is ― does he believe it himself? Truthfully, it doesn’t matter now.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
London: Former British prime minister Boris Johnson’s written defence in response to an influential parliamentary committee was published on Tuesday and in it he accepts that he misled Parliament over the partygate scandal of COVID lockdown law-breaching parties at Downing Street, but did so in “good faith”.
Johnson is due to give oral evidence to the House of Commons Privileges Committee this week and made written submissions ahead of that, in which he criticises the panel for going “significantly beyond its terms of reference”.
The 58-year-old backbench Tory MP also tries to discredit the cross-party committee’s interim report, describing it as “highly partisan”.
“I accept that the House of Commons was misled by my statements that the Rules and Guidance had been followed completely at No. 10,” reads his evidence.
“But when the statements were made, they were made in good faith and on the basis of what I honestly knew and believed at the time. I did not intentionally or recklessly mislead the House on 1 December 2021, 8 December 2021, or on any other date. I would never have dreamed of doing so,” he said.
The former prime minister, whose exit from 10 Downing Street last year had been hastened by the partygate scandal, had repeatedly denied COVID lockdown rules were broken within government quarters when asked in the Commons.
With specific reference to a surprise birthday party for him in June 2020, the former prime minister expresses shock at having been handed a fine for it following a Metropolitan Police investigation because no cake was eaten.
“I was in the Cabinet Room for a work meeting and was joined by a small gathering of people, all of whom lived or were working in the building. We had a sandwich lunch together and they wished me Happy Birthday. I was not told in advance that this would happen. No cake was eaten, and no-one even sang happy birthday’. The primary topic of conversation was the response to Covid-19,” he writes.
The Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK group took to Twitter to say that it is “sickening” that Johnson claimed he acted in “good faith” while accepting he misled the House of Commons over partygate.
The parliamentary committee also hit back to say his submission contains “no new evidence” in his defence.
“The evidence strongly suggests that breaches of guidance would have been obvious to Mr Johnson at the time he was at the gatherings,” the Privileges Committee had said in its interim report released earlier this month.
Johnson is due to give oral evidence to the committee on Wednesday, following which it will submit its report to British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. It will be up to him to sign off on any sanction against his ex-boss, which could involve a suspension from Parliament if found to have knowingly misled Parliament.
London: Britain’s former premier Boris Johnson on Thursday criticised Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s new Brexit deal with the European Union, saying he will find it “very difficult” to vote for it in Parliament.
Sunak has been riding high on a largely positive wave since the British Prime Minister declared a “decisive breakthrough” with the EU in the form of a Windsor Framework, which replaces his former boss’ controversial Northern Ireland Protocol.
The British Indian leader told the House of Commons that the new pact puts “beyond all doubt that we have now taken back control”.
However, Johnson now a disgruntled backbench Conservative Party MP told a Global Soft Power Summit in London on Thursday that he would find it “very difficult” to vote for the new deal in Parliament.
“I’m conscious I’m not going to be thanked for saying this, but I think it is my job to do so: we must be clear about what is really going on here,” said Johnson.
“This is not about the UK taking back control, and although there are easements this is really a version of the solution that was being offered last year to (former British prime minister) Liz Truss when she was foreign secretary. This is the EU graciously unbending to allow us to do what we want to do in our own country, not by our laws but by theirs,” he said.
“I’m going to find it very difficult to vote for something like this myself because I believe that we should have done something different. No matter how much plaster came off the ceiling in Brussels,” he added.
Johnson said he hopes the new deal works but if it doesn’t, the government should have “the guts” to re-table the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill he had drafted which would allow the UK to unilaterally change parts of the previous Brexit protocol without the EU’s permission. While the EU claims such a move breaches international law, Johnson believes it is the Bill that ultimately “brought the EU to negotiate seriously”.
Sunak had pulled the Bill from Parliament after he agreed a new deal with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Windsor on Monday, following months of intensive talks.
It is hoped the Windsor Framework would break the deadlock over the contentious and unworkable Northern Ireland Protocol, which was designed to prevent a post-Brexit hard border on the island of Ireland between UK territory Northern Ireland and EU member-state Ireland but which effectively created a trade divide.
Now, Sunak is waiting for the response of the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the clear backing of hard Brexiteers within his own Tory party for the new framework. Johnson’s intervention is expected to influence the latter to some extent but there is a general consensus that Sunak is unlikely to face any major rebellion in the ranks over the issue.
After what has been widely seen as a win for his leadership abilities, the Prime Minister has decided to treat his party colleagues to an “away day” in Windsor the site of the new Brexit framework.
According to The Times’ newspaper, Conservative Party MPs have been bussed from London to Windsor on Thursday morning for 24 hours of bonding, teambuilding and strategising.
LONDON — It was clear when Boris Johnson was forced from Downing Street that British politics had changed forever.
But few could have predicted that less than six months later, all angry talk of a cross-Channel trade war would be a distant memory, with Britain and the EU striking a remarkable compromise deal over post-Brexit trade rules in Northern Ireland.
Private conversations with more than a dozen U.K. and EU officials, politicians and diplomats reveal how the Brexit world changed completely after Johnson’s departure — and how an “unholy trinity” of little-known civil servants, ensconced in a gloomy basement in Brussels, would mastermind a seismic shift in Britain’s relationship with the Continent.
They were aided by an unlikely sequence of political events in Westminster — not least an improbable change of mood under the combative Liz Truss; and then the jaw-dropping rise to power of the ultra-pragmatic Rishi Sunak. Even the amiable figure of U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly would play his part, glad-handing his way around Europe and smoothing over cracks that had grown ever-wider since 2016.
As Sunak’s Conservative MPs pore over the detail of his historic agreement with Brussels — and await the all-important verdict of the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland — POLITICO has reconstructed the dramatic six-month shift in Britain’s approach that brought us to the brink of the Brexit deal we see today.
Bye-bye Boris
Johnson’s departure from Downing Street, on September 6, triggered an immediate mood shift in London toward the EU — and some much-needed optimism within the bloc about future cross-Channel relations.
For key figures in EU capitals, Johnson would always be the untrustworthy figure who signed the protocol agreement only to disown it months afterward.
In Paris, relations were especially poisonous, amid reports of Johnson calling the French “turds”; endless spats with the Elysée over post-Brexit fishing rights, sausages and cross-Channel migrants; and Britain’s role in the AUKUS security partnership, which meant the loss of a multi-billion submarine contract for France. Paris’ willingness to engage with Johnson was limited in the extreme.
Truss, despite her own verbal spats with French President Emmanuel Macron — and her famously direct approach to diplomacy — was viewed in a different light. Her success at building close rapport with negotiating partners had worked for her as trade secretary, and once she became prime minister, she wanted to move beyond bilateral squabbles and focus on global challenges, including migration, energy and the war in Ukraine.
“Boris had become ‘Mr. Brexit,’” one former U.K. government adviser said. “He was the one the EU associated with the protocol, and obviously [Truss] didn’t come with the same baggage. She had covered the brief, but she didn’t have the same history. As prime minister, Liz wanted to use her personal relationships to move things on — but that wasn’t the same as a shift in the underlying substance.”
Indeed, Truss was still clear on the need to pass the controversial Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which would have given U.K. ministers powers to overrule part of the protocol unilaterally, in order to ensure leverage in the talks with the European Commission.
Truss also triggered formal dispute proceedings against Brussels for blocking Britain’s access to the EU’s Horizon Europe research program. And her government maintained Johnson’s refusal to implement checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain, causing deep irritation in Brussels.
But despite the noisy backdrop, tentative contact with Brussels quietly resumed in September, with officials on both sides trying to rebuild trust. Truss, however, soon became “very disillusioned by the lack of pragmatism from the EU,” one of her former aides said.
“The negotiations were always about political will, not technical substance — and for whatever reason, the political will to compromise from the Commission was never there when Liz, [ex-negotiator David] Frost, Boris were leading things,” they said.
Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss announces her resignation outside 10 Downing Street in central London on October 20, 2022 | Daniel Leal/AFP via Getty Images
Truss, of course, would not be leading things for long. An extraordinary meltdown of the financial markets precipitated her own resignation in late October, after just six weeks in office. Political instability in Westminster once again threatened to derail progress.
But Sunak’s arrival in No. 10 Downing Street — amid warnings of a looming U.K. recession — gave new impetus to the talks. An EU official said the mood music improved further, and that discussions with London became “much more constructive” as a result.
David Lidington, a former deputy to ex-PM Theresa May who played a key role in previous Brexit negotiations, describes Sunak as a “globalist” rather than an “ultra-nationalist,” who believes Britain ought to have “a sensible, friendly and grown-up relationship” with Brussels outside the EU.
During his time as chancellor, Sunak was seen as a moderating influence on his fellow Brexiteer Cabinet colleagues, several of whom seemed happy to rush gung-ho toward a trade war with the EU.
“Rishi has always thought of the protocol row as a nuisance, an issue he wanted to get dealt with,” the former government adviser first quoted said.
One British officialsuggested the new prime minister’s reputation for pragmatism gave the U.K. negotiating team “an opportunity to start again.”
Sunak’s slow decision-making and painstaking attention to detail — the subject of much criticism in Whitehall — proved useful in calming EU jitters about the new regime, they added.
“When he came in, it wasn’t just the calming down of the markets. It was everyone across Europe and in the U.S. thinking ‘OK, they’re done going through their crazy stage,’” the same officialsaid. “It’s the time he takes with everything, the general steadiness.”
EU leaders “have watched him closely, they listened to what he said, and they have been prepared to trust him and see how things go,” Lidington noted.
Global backdrop
As months of chaos gave way to calm in London, the West was undergoing a seismic reorganization.
Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine triggered a flurry of coordinated work for EU and U.K. diplomats — including sanctions, military aid, reconstruction talks and anti-inflation packages. A sense began to emerge that it was in both sides’ common interest to get the Northern Ireland protocol row out of the way.
“The war in Ukraine has completely changed the context over the last year,” an EU diplomat said.
A second U.K. official agreed. “Suddenly we realized that the 2 percent of the EU border we’d been arguing about was nothing compared to the massive border on the other side of the EU, which Putin was threatening,” they said. “And suddenly there wasn’t any electoral benefit to keeping this row over Brexit going — either for us or for governments across the EU.”
A quick glance at the electoral calendar made it clear 2023 offered the last opportunity to reach a deal in the near future, with elections looming for both the U.K. and EU parliaments the following year — effectively putting any talks on ice.
“Rishi Sunak would have certainly been advised by his officials that come 2024, the EU is not going to be wanting to take any new significant initiatives,” Lidington said. “And we will be in election mode.”
The upcoming 25th anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday peace agreement on April 10 heaped further pressure on the U.K. negotiators, amid interest from U.S. President Joe Biden in visiting Europe to mark the occasion.
“The anniversary was definitely playing on people’s minds,” the first U.K. official said.“Does [Sunak] really want to be the prime minister when there’s no government in Northern Ireland on the anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement?”
The pressure was ramped up further when Biden specifically raised the protocol in a meeting with Truss at the U.N. General Assembly in New York in late September, after which British officials said they expected the 25th anniversary to act as a “key decision point” on the dispute.
The King and I
Whitehall faced further pressure from another unlikely source — King Charles III, who was immediately planning a state visit to Paris within weeks of ascending the throne in September 2022. Truss had suggested delaying the visit until the protocol row was resolved, according to two European diplomats.
The monarch is now expected to visit Paris and Berlin at the end of March — and although his role is strictly apolitical, few doubt he is taking a keen interest in proceedings. He has raised the protocol in recent conversations with European diplomats, showing a close engagement with the detail.
One former senior diplomat involved in several of the king’s visits said that Charles has long held “a private interest in Ireland, and has wanted to see if there was an appropriately helpful role he could play in improving relations [with the U.K].”
By calling the deal the Windsor framework and presenting it at a press conference in front of Windsor Castle, one of the king’s residences, No. 10 lent Monday’s proceedings an unmistakable royal flavor.
The king also welcomed von der Leyen for tea at the castle following the signing of the deal. A Commission spokesperson insisted their meeting was “separate” from the protocol discussion talks. Tory MPs were skeptical.
Cleverly does it
The British politician tasked with improving relations with Brussels was Foreign Secretary Cleverly, appointed by Truss last September. He immediately began exploring ways to rebuild trust with Commission Vice-President and Brexit point-man Maroš Šefčovič, the second U.K. official cited said.
His first hurdle was a perception in Brussels that the British team had sabotaged previous talks by leaking key details to U.K. newspapers and hardline Tory Brexiteers for domestic political gain. As a result, U.K. officials made a conscious effort to keep negotiations tightly sealed, a No. 10 official said.
“The relationship with Maroš improved massively when we agreed not to carry out a running commentary” on the content of the discussions, the second U.K. official added.
This meant keeping key government ministers out of the loop, including Northern Ireland Minister Steve Baker, an arch-Brexiteer who had been brought back onto the frontbench by Truss.
British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly is welcomed by European Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič ahead of a meeting at the EU headquarters in Brussels on February 17, 2023 | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
The first U.K. official said Baker would have “felt the pain,” as he had little to offer his erstwhile backbench colleagues looking for guidance while negotiations progressed, “and that was a choice by No. 10.”
Cleverly and Šefčovič “spent longer than people think just trying to build rapport,” the second U.K. officialsaid, with Cleverly explaining the difficulties the protocol was raising in Northern Ireland and Šefčovič insistent that key economic sectors were in fact benefiting from the arrangement.
Cleverly also worked at the bilateral relationship with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, while Sunak made efforts to improve ties with French President Emmanuel Macron, Lidington noted.
A British diplomat based in Washington said Cleverly had provided “a breath of fresh air” after the “somewhat stiff” manner of his predecessors, Truss and the abrasive Dominic Raab.
By the Conservative party conference in early October, the general mood among EU diplomats in attendance was one of expectation. And the Birmingham jamboree did not disappoint.
Sorry is the hardest word
Baker, who had once described himself as a “Brexit hard man,” stunned Dublin by formally apologizing to the people of Ireland for his past comments, just days before technical talks between the Commission and the U.K. government were due to resume.
“I caused a great deal of inconvenience and pain and difficulty,” he said. “Some of our actions were not very respectful of Ireland’s legitimate interests. I want to put that right.”
The apology was keenly welcomed in Dublin, where Micheál Martin, the Irish prime minister at the time, called it “honest and very, very helpful.”
Irish diplomats based in the U.K. met Baker and other prominent figures from the European Research Group of Tory Euroskeptics at the party conference, where Baker spoke privately of his “humility” and his “resolve” to address the issues, a senior Irish diplomat said.
“Resolve was the keyword,” the envoy said. “If Steve Baker had the resolve to work for a transformation of relationships between Ireland and the U.K., then we thought — there were tough talks to be had — but a sustainable deal was now a possibility.”
There were other signs of rapprochement. Just a few hours after Baker’s earth-shattering apology, Truss confirmed her attendance at the inaugural meeting in Prague of the European Political Community, a new forum proposed by Macron open to both EU and non-EU countries.
Sunak at the wheel
The momentum snowballed under Sunak, who decided within weeks of becoming PM to halt the passage of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill in the House of Lords, reiterating Britain’s preference for a negotiated settlement. In exchange, the Commission froze a host of infringement proceedings taking aim at the way the U.K. was handling the protocol. This created space for talks to proceed in a more cordial environment.
An EU-U.K. agreement in early January allowed Brussels to start using a live information system detailing goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, seen as key to unlocking a wider agreement on physical checks under the protocol.
The U.K. also agreed to conduct winter technical negotiations in Brussels, rather than alternating rounds between the EU capital and London, as was the case when Frost served as Britain’s chief negotiator.
Trust continued to build. Suddenly the Commission was open to U.K. solutions such as the “Stormont brake,” a clause giving the Northern Ireland Assembly power of veto over key protocol machinations, which British officials did not believe Brussels would accept when they first pitched them.
The Stormont brake was discussed “relatively early on,” a third U.K. official said. “Then we spent a huge amount of effort making sure nobody knew about it. It was kept the most secret of secret things.”
Yet a second EU diplomat claimed the ideas in the deal were not groundbreaking and could have been struck “years ago” if Britain had a prime minister with enough political will to solve the dispute. “None of the solutions that have been found now is revolutionary,” they said.
An ally of Johnson described the claim he was a block on progress as “total nonsense.”
The ‘unholy trinity’
Away from the media focus, a group of seasoned U.K. officials began to engage with their EU counterparts in earnest. But there was one (not so) new player in town.
Tim Barrow, a former U.K. permanent representative to the EU armed with a peerless contact book, had been an active figure in rebuilding relations with the bloc since Truss appointed him national security adviser. He acquired a more prominent role in the protocol talks after Sunak dispatched him to Brussels in January 2023, hoping EU figures would see him as “almost one of them,” another adviser to Sunak said.
Ensconced in the EU capital, Barrow and his U.K. team of negotiators took over several meeting rooms in the basement of the U.K. embassy, while staffers were ordered to keep quiet about their presence.
Besides his work on Northern Ireland trade, Barrow began to appear in meetings with EU representatives about other key issues creating friction in the EU-U.K. relationship, including discussions on migration alongside U.K. Home Secretary Suella Braverman.
Barrow “positioned himself very well,” the first EU diplomat quoted above said. “He’s very close to the prime minister — everybody in Brussels and London knows he’s got his ear. He’s very knowledgeable while very political.”
But other British officials insist Barrow’s presence was not central to driving through the deal. “He has been a figure, but not the only figure,” the U.K. adviser quoted above said. “It’s been a lot of people, actually, over quite a period of time.”
When it came to the tough, detailed technical negotiations, the burden fell on the shoulders of Mark Davies — the head of the U.K. taskforce praised for his mastery of the protocol detail — and senior civil servant and former director of the Northern Ireland Office, Brendan Threlfall.
The three formed an “unholy trinity,” as described by the first U.K. official, with each one bringing something to the table.
Davies was “a classic civil servant, an unsung hero,”the official said, while Threlfall “has good connections, good understanding” and “Tim has met all the EU interlocutors over the years.”
Sitting across the table, the EU team was led by Richard Szostak, a Londoner born to Polish parents and a determined Commission official with a great CV and an affinity for martial arts. His connection to von der Leyen was her deputy head of cabinet until recently, Stéphanie Riso, a former member of Brussels’ Brexit negotiating team who developed a reputation for competence on both sides of the debate.
Other senior figures at the U.K. Cabinet Office played key roles, including Cabinet Secretary Simon Case and senior official Sue Gray.
The latter — a legendary Whitehall enforcer who adjudicated over Johnson’s “Partygate” scandal — has a longstanding connection to Northern Ireland, famously taking a career break in the late 1980s to run a pub in Newry, where she has family links. More recently, she spent two years overseeing the finance ministry.
Gray has been spotted in Stormont at crunch points over the past six months as Northern Ireland grapples with the pain of the continued absence of an executive.
Some predict Gray could yet play a further role, in courting the Democratic Unionist Party as the agreement moves forward in the weeks ahead.
For U.K. and EU officials, the agreement struck with Brussels represented months of hard work — but for Sunak and his Cabinet colleagues, the hardest yards may yet lie ahead.
This story was updated to clarify two parts of the sourcing.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Kyiv: Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Sunday reached the Ukrainian capital and visited its outskirts before meeting President Volodymyr Zelensky, reports said.
The Conservative MP said it was a “privilege” to visit the country at the invitation of Zelensky, the BBC reported.
The unannounced visit came as fresh questions over Johnson’s personal finances emerged in the UK, including claims that BBC Chairman Richard Sharp helped Mr Johnson secure a loan while he was Prime Minister.
Johnson, who made no mention of the allegations, he was received by the President and other Ukrainian ministers.
“I welcome Boris Johnson, a true friend of Ukraine, to Kyiv. Boris thanks for your support!” Zelensky wrote on Telegram.
Johnson also visited the towns of Bucha and Borodyanka, which were occupied by Russian forces in March last year, and allegedly saw a massacre.
Boris Johnson leaped back into the spotlight on Sunday after videos of the former British prime minister visiting Ukraine were posted online, in a move likely to irritate the Conservative government back home.
Posts on Twitter show Johnson meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and visiting the war-struck towns of Bucha and Borodyanka near Kyiv.
Johnson is a member of the British parliament but doesn’t hold any official role in the government led by Rishi Sunak.
The former prime minister was removed by his own Conservative party last year amid collapsing support in the polls and an administration dogged by a seeming never-ending series of scandals. He is now also facing questions about his financial dealings.
But in Ukraine, Johnson is regarded as a hero for his steadfast support of the country after its invasion by Russia in February 2022. He was awarded an honorary “Citizen of Kyiv” medal from the city’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko at Davos last week.
The Ukraine visit — which according to the Telegraph was not announced in advance nor arranged via the British embassy — could be seen as a move to undermine Sunak. Johnson, a seasoned politician, is known for his crowd-pleasing stunts and rhetorical flourishes. Though he was removed by his fellow Conservatives, he’s still popular among a hard core of supporters in the party.
Johnson weighed into the ongoing debate about supplying Ukraine with advanced battle tanks. The U.K. has agreed to send Challenger 2 tanks to the Ukrainian battlefield, but Germany continues to hesitate about delivering Leopard 2 tanks.
“The only way to end this war is for Ukraine to win — and to win as fast as possible,” Johnson said in a statement. “This is the moment to double down, and to give the Ukrainians all the tools they need to finish the job.”
A spokesperson for No. 10 Downing Street said Sunak is “always supportive of all colleagues showing that the U.K. is behind Ukraine and will continue to support them.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
London: British Prime Minster Rishi Sunak is seen as more trustworthy, more economically competent and more likely to win votes than his former boss, Boris Johnson, in a new survey of voting intentions that was released on Saturday.
The Savanta ComRes survey for The Independent’ newspaper found that Johnson’s perceived popularity as the Conservative Party leader who won a big mandate in the 2019 general election does not necessarily translate among British voters ahead of the next polls expected in 2024.
The survey finds that 63 percent are opposed to Johnson, 58, trying to lead the country again with only 24 percent in favour of the idea.
At the same time, around 41 percent of voters believe Sunak, 42, can “improve” the reputation of the Tory party, with only 19 percent saying the same of Johnson.
“The former Prime Minister’s backers believe he has electoral magic’ but the results show that Mr Sunak is deemed more trustworthy, more economically competent and more likely to win their vote,” the survey findings in the newspaper reveal.
“Mr Johnson’s allies are keen for the former PM to return from the wilderness, replace Rishi Sunak and lead the Tory party into the general election expected in 2024. But 63 percent are opposed to Mr Johnson trying to lead the country again with only 24 percent in favour of the idea,” it notes.
A clear majority of voters (58 per cent) believe Johnson should have to resign his Uxbridge and Ruislip seat as a Tory MP in London if he is found to have lied over Partygate at the parliamentary inquiry, set to begin by next month.
Although both Johnson and Sunak were fined in the scandal for attending a birthday party at No.10 Downing Street in violation of COVID curbs, around 39 percent of the British public blame the former prime minister for Partygate, while only 9 percent blame Sunak.
Only 14 percent of voters think Johnson can be trusted to tell the truth, while 39 percent believe the same of Indian-origin Sunak.
On the economy, only 19 percent trust Johnson to manage the nation’s finances versus 44 percent for the current Tory leader.
Chris Hopkins, director of Savanta, said the survey numbers showed that discussions by some Tories about bringing back Johnson “should come with serious health warnings”.
“Boris Johnson, and to some extent Liz Truss, are responsible for the Conservatives dire polling numbers,” he warned.
The Savanta ComRes survey comprised of 2,064 adults was carried out between January 13 and January 15 in the UK.
