Brexit: Just Who’s Trying to Get UK’s Great Deal?

So we have finally begun negotiations to divorce the European Union and bring home this wonderful deal for all of us. But who is arguing our case and is a deal likely? Who are the ministers taking us into this uncertain, unwanted territory and are they up to the biggest job in British public life?

David Davis: Brexit Secretary (Leave)

You’ll be sick of Davis’s name before long. As Secretary of State for Exiting the EU he’s the principal negotiator for the UK and is a longtime Eurosceptic and political maverick.

Davis has always peddled a hard man image after a tough upbringing and time as a Territorial Army SAS reserve. Born to a working-class single mother and brought up on a Tooting council estate, he was front runner for the Tory leadership in 2005 but lost to David Cameron and became Shadow Home Secretary.

Before becoming an MP at 38 Davis was a sugar industry executive. He served as a party whip for Prime Minister John Major, angering fellow Eurosceptics by fighting to get Tory MPs to support the EU’s Maastricht Treaty. He then became a Minister in the Foreign Office for three years, where he was responsible for deal negotiations with Europe, NATO enlargement and the updated Geneva Convention. In that role he built a relationship with Michel Barnier, now his opposite number in the Brexit talks.

So Davis has some EU exposure but lacks the top-level experience as a minister, negotiator or EU expert that one would hope to see in the man leading us out of the Union. He is seen by many colleagues as erratic and weak on policy detail, and he spent the entire period of Cameron’s government in the political wilderness. Theresa May revived his career when she wanted to appoint a Brexiteer to handle the Brexit process. At 68 he’s less of a comeback kid, more of a resurrected retiree.

Baroness Anelay of St John: Brexit Minister (Remain)

The former Joyce Anelay was appointed as the second-most senior Brexit Minister just seven days before the negotiations began. Theresa May used her post-election reshuffle to sack the incumbent David Jones, a former Cabinet Secretary who had spent a year in the job preparing for the negotiations.

Baroness Anelay has hardly any experience relevant to the EU talks. She spent five years as a high school history teacher until 1974, then combined voluntary community work with being active in the Tory Party, chairing its women’s committee from 1993 to 1996, when she was appointed to the House of Lords. She spent seven years mustering Tory Lords as Chief Whip until 2014, when she became a Foreign Minister dealing with the Commonwealth and the UN. In 2016 she spent a few weeks as a stand-in Trade Minister

Anelay, who turns 70 in July, opposed Brexit in last year’s referendum. Her main policy interests have been crime and justice, and abroad she has been interested in human rights and security.

Robin Walker: Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Remain)

Walker is a former public relations man turned MP whose first taste of ministerial life was his appointment to the Brexit Department a year ago. At 39 he has spent seven years as the MP for Worcester, a seat his father Peter held for 31 years.

Before that Walker was a partner at Finsbury, one of the UK’s best-connected lobbying and PR firms. A fierce backer of David Cameron and strong supporter of staying in the EU during the Brexit campaign, the Oxford graduate’s political interests have included credit unions and education.

Before his Brexit appointment he had no experience or expertise in international affairs beyond joining an All Parliamentary Group for China. His CV does mention that he “likes travel”.

Steve Baker: Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Leave)

Steve Baker’s remarkably brief tenure at the Brexit department is even shorter than Baroness Anelay’s. His appointment on June 13 meant he was in the job for just six days before the talks began.

Baker’s predecessor George Bridges had been preparing for the talks for a year when he got the chop, and had a political pedigree going back to three years working for John Major during his battles with EU rebels in the mid-1990s.

A former air force engineer, Baker was a banker at Lehman Brothers until its catastrophic collapse in 2008, then became an MP two years later and remained a backbencher until getting this promotion.

The 46-year-old’s strongest credential for the job seems to be a year spent running a pro-Brexit group among Tory backbenchers.  He wanted the UK to leave the EU and help create a “new global trading system”..

Sir Tim Barrow: UK permanent representative to the EU

A specialist on Russia and security issues, Barrow was drafted into the Brussels job when Sir Ivan Rogers quit at the beginning of the year. Barrow served as first secretary at the UK office in Brussels in 1996-98 and certainly knows his way around EU issues but his credentials pale against those of Rogers, whose EU experience was called “second to none” by one Labour peer.

Rogers’ resignation email warned that “serious multilateral negotiating experience is in short supply in Whitehall, and that is not the case in the (European) Commission or in the Council. The government will only achieve the best deal for the country if it harnesses the best experience we have…”.

Looking at this collection of latecomers and inexperienced ministers, Rogers’ warning seems to have been ignored. How is the great deal looking?

by Jo Davey

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