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Theresa May 'didn't know how EU worked' when she became Prime Minister

Prime Minister Theresa May didn’t understand how to conduct Brexit negotiations, it has been claimed. (PA)
Prime Minister Theresa May didn’t understand how to conduct Brexit negotiations, it has been claimed. (PA)

Theresa May didn’t have a full understanding of the EU ahead of Brexit negotiations, a former ambassador has claimed.

Sir Ivan Rogers, the UK’s former ambassador to the EU, said the Prime Minister failed to understand it was Brussels bureaucrats rather than her fellow leaders, who were key to the process.

Speaking at an event Institute for Government think tank on Monday he said Mrs May’s advisors “didn’t know very much about European councils or that much about the EU”, which led to them following a doomed strategy.

He said: “Capitals obviously matter, but I think having lived through this with a number of prime ministers, a number of different negotiations… that reflex in the British system always to think that we can deal direct with the organ grinders and not the monkeys: it never works like that.”

Sir Ivan Rogers in 2017. He has warned Brexit negotiators that they risk ‘endless toxic running battles’ unless they change their approach.
Sir Ivan Rogers in 2017. He has warned Brexit negotiators that they risk ‘endless toxic running battles’ unless they change their approach.

Sir Ivan said that British leaders “constantly either misunderstand that or just don’t realise” that going straight to another European capital “doesn’t work”.

Sir Ivan served as the UK’s top civil servant in Brussels between November 2013 and January 2017 and was previously Mr Cameron’s advisor on EU affairs.

He left months before negotiations began with the EU over differences of opinion with Mrs May’s team.

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He told the event: “These fantasies of release and liberation, they are fantasies.

“We are going to be negotiating on everything from aviation to farming forevermore with our biggest neighbour. We cannot live in glorious isolation.

“Talk to the Swiss and to the Norwegians, they live in a permanent state of negotiation with the EU.”

But he went onto say that he did not believe staying inside the EU’s Customs Union, a key tenet of the Labour Party’s plans for Brexit, would be a sensible solution for the UK.

“I don’t think it will be sustainable long-term to be in a customs union and not have a greater degree of autonomy over our trade policy,” he said.

“We would get consultation rights, sure, we might get superior consultation rights, but they would only be consultation rights, and ultimately the negotiating mandate would reflect the interests of the 27, no doubt articulated carefully to take account of British interests.”