Steve Barclay says the EU doesn’t have a mandate for the Irish “backstop” because there are new MEPs. Can somebody please tell the Brexit secretary how the EU functions?
Barclay writes in the Mail on Sunday that Michel Barnier, the European Commission’s chief negotiator, has lost his mandate. “Since the last mandate was agreed, 61 per cent of all the EU states’ MEPs have changed. Such a fundamental shift illustrates the need for a change of approach.”
It is true that the European Parliament’s composition has changed as it does after every election. However, if anything, the number of anti-Brexit MEPs has gone up with surges for the Greens, Liberals and even hard left MEPs. The UK itself chose more MEPs opposed to hard Brexit than those in favour.
In any case, it is not the European Parliament that determines Barnier’s negotiating mandate but the heads of the EU’s 27 governments. When Barnier told Barclay last week – “his mandate is his mandate – he can only negotiate what the Commission and leaders of member states have agreed” – he was telling the truth.
Barclay can go and hunt down any number of MEPs on their holiday beaches if he wishes. But it will be utterly pointless.
If the Brexit secretary wants Barnier to get a new negotiating mandate, he should tell Boris Johnson to go and see France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Angela Merkel and Ireland’s Leo Varadkar. Mind you, such visits won’t change anything either. Europe’s leaders have made clear until blue in the face that they will not betray peace in Northern Ireland just to appease the Farageiste tendency now in charge in the Conservative government.
Our new prime minister insists he will not talk to his opposite numbers unless they get rid of the backstop. If he really sticks to such a foolish approach, there will be no talks at all.
The rest of Europe is just enjoying the summer sun and puzzled at Johnson’s team making foolish statements. Barclay’s remarks come hot on the heels of Dominic Raab falsely claiming he regularly mentioned the virtues of a no-deal Brexit during the referendum campaign and James Cleverly wrongly saying the EU stops us having free ports.
The narrow group of anti-European obsessives who have seized control of the British government may be convincing themselves with increasingly wild post-truth claims. They are not convincing anyone else.