30 June 2019 | UK NEWS
Oliver Robbins, the Prime Minister’s Europe Adviser and Chief Negotiator for the Brexit process, is to step down from his post shortly after the next Leader of the Conservative Party becomes Prime Minister in late July, it is understood in Westminster. There are rumours that he may move on to take up a job in the City. The next Prime Minister will take up his post after Theresa May steps down following her final Prime Minister’s Questions on 25th July.
The news broke during the Tory leadership hustings yesterday, with contender Jeremy Hunt noting that it was “a good moment to change our approach”. This announcement was met with cheers from the Conservative Party members present at the event, with Mr Hunt adding that he “didn’t agree with the approach that we took in a number of areas” in respect of Britain’s negotiations to depart from the European Union.
He added, however: “I’m not going to say something about a civil servant who I know works incredibly hard, even though there are issues I disagree with him on. But I do think now is a moment that we have to get this right, deliver a different deal and one that can actually get through Parliament.”
The news comes amid reports that other senior Civil Service officials are also planning to step down from their roles, with Tom Shinner (Director of Policy and Delivery Co-ordination at DExEU) and Karen Wheeler (Director General of HMRC’s Brexit Border Delivery Group) both announcing their intention to quit recently.
This series of resignations appears to underscore a feeling within top Civil Service staffers that delivering Brexit in a manner envisioned by either Mr Johnson or Mr Hunt is not something they wish to be associated with. Indeed, both contenders are reported to be assembling new negotiating teams, with Mr Hunt having reportedly recruited former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to assist with future trade negotiations, while Mr Johnson is said to be in talks with Sir Edward Lister.
It comes as Mr Johnson, who is the current favourite to win the Tory leadership contest, is reported in The Telegraph to be planning to sack around a third of the current Cabinet in order to build a new team of top Government Ministers who will support his Brexit ambitions. This approach would not be dissimilar to his previous style of leadership while Mayor of London.
Across the Parliamentary benches, the Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, has told Sky that it is taking longer than he expected to shift the Labour Party’s stance towards Remain, and to support a second referendum to confirm this. He confirmed that a meeting had taken place between Jeremy Corbyn and senior trade union officials about the “attitude” that Labour should take, at which point the unions had asked for more time to decide.
Mr McDonnell added: “[Jeremy] had a meeting on the Monday before the last shadow cabinet and I thought the next day we were going to move forward. The unions asked for a bit more time and I don’t mind that – that’s the type of leader Jeremy is, he is a consensus builder.”
In the same context, Len McCluskey, the head of the Unite union, has told Andrew Marr that there should be no “panic” about switching Labour’s position on Brexit, saying that he blamed the present “toxic situation” on a “well-funded Remain campaign”. He added that “we have had a Prime Minister who has made huge mistakes and a government which has been incapable of delivering Brexit.”
In the newspapers this weekend, The Daily Mail reports that Nigel Farage will announce a £200 billion spending package to rejuvenate Britain’s regions at a major Brexit Party rally this afternoon. He reportedly plans to deliver this by scrapping both HS2 and the Foreign Aid budget, while also refusing to pay the £39 billion ‘divorce bill’ demanded by the EU in return for an orderly Brexit. However, these plans still leave £47 billion unaccounted for.
Meanwhile, The Mirror carries a story today about Labour’s demand for an official probe into a report published in The Times yesterday, which appeared to call into question Mr Corbyn’s health and physical fitness to be Prime Minister. Jon Trickett, Labour’s Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office, is said to have written to Mark Sedwill, the Cabinet Secretary, to call for an independent enquiry. Mr Sedwill is not believed to have responded yet, at the time of writing.
