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My Secret Brexit Diary: A Glorious Illusion Hardcover – 27 Sept. 2021
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In June 2016, the people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. As the EU’s chief negotiator, for four years Michel Barnier had a seat at the table as the two sides thrashed out what ‘Brexit’ would really mean. The result would change Britain and Europe forever.
During the 1600 days of complex and often acrimonious negotiations, Michel Barnier kept a secret diary. He recorded his private hopes and fears, and gave a blow-by-blow account as the negotiations oscillated between consensus and disagreement, transparency and lies.
From Brussels to London, from Dublin to Nicosia, Michel Barnier’s secret diary lifts the lid on what really happened behind the scenes of one of the most high-stakes negotiations in modern history. The result is a unique testimony from the ultimate insider on the hidden world of Brexit and those who made it happen.
- Print length450 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPolity
- Publication date27 Sept. 2021
- Dimensions16.26 x 4.32 x 23.11 cm
- ISBN-101509550860
- ISBN-13978-1509550869
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From the Publisher
My Secret Brexit Diary: A Glorious Illusion
My Secret Brexit Diary: A Glorious Illusion
What really went on behind the scenes of Brexit negotiations? As the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier had a seat at the table as the two sides thrashed out what ‘Brexit’ would really mean.
He kept a secret diary.
It pulls no punches.
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Product description
Review
"There is admiration for Britain in Barnier's Secret Brexit Diary, a blow-by-blow account of the marathon dance that he performed with a succession of British ministers and two prime ministers, all of whose behaviour he found exasperating."
The Times
"Michel Barnier's new book helps explain why Britain ended up being comprehensively out-negotiated over Brexit and saddled with a flawed withdrawal agreement and a deeply disadvantageous future relationship, both of which will cause us major problems for decades to come. This is therefore an important account."
Jonathan Powell, The Guardian
"Michel Barnier, who is one of the most experienced and intelligent leaders in the world, played a hugely significant role in the Brexit process and this book provides a lively and compelling account of it, drawing on his unique perspective. Anyone with a serious interest in understanding the terms of the UK's departure from the European Union will benefit from reading it."
Tony Blair
"Michel Barnier, an Anglophile and natural team-player, is methodical, loyal, steady, above all honest. So his Brexit diary is disconcerting: it seems we really were as ill-prepared and inconsistent as observers suspected. His accounts of the posturing of Davis and Raab, and his discovery that he couldn't trust Johnson and Frost, ring all too true. His is a sobering story of British self-harm."
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard
"For historians writing about the UK’s long and painful exit from the European Union, Michel Barnier's account is essential reading. For anyone interested in Brexit, it offers a valuable guide to the EU's negotiating strategy and the people who shaped it."
Jennifer Rankin, Brussels Correspondent, The Guardian
"If the treaties are the legal texts of the Brexit talks then this is the human version, revealing a Michel Barnier who is much warmer and far less diplomatic than his public persona. It's a masterclass in how the EU operates, and a rare glimpse into the tensions on their side."
Adam Fleming, Chief Political Correspondent, BBC News
"How did the European Union deal with the challenge of losing a leading member state? In this unique insider's account, the EU's chief negotiator reflects on the Brexit process, how it unfolded and how he managed the EU's approach to the talks. Required reading for everyone interested in figuring out what happened and why."
Anand Menon, Professor of European Politics at King's College, London, and author of Brexit and British Politics
"This book is required reading for anyone seriously interested in the exhausting saga of the Brexit negotiations, and it is good to have an English edition of what is undoubtedly an important historical document."
Robert Tombs, Professor Emeritus of French History at the University of Cambridge and author of The English and Their History
"This is a political thriller: 500 pages of twists and turns, advances and setbacks, taking place behind the scenes in an altogether extraordinary negotiation."
Nicolas Demorand, France Inter
"The former European chief negotiator has delivered his Brexit novel: a unique experience of four and a half years recounted day by day, in the theatre of the powerful with its noble aims and petty squabbles, its backtracking and its bluffs, its laughter and its tears, including very personal ones. And it's absolutely riveting."
Mathieu Laine, Les Échos
"An important account of how the EU comprehensively out-negotiated the UK."
The New Statesman
"Europe out-negotiated the United Kingdom across the board. The British people―faced with confusion on the border with Ireland, severe labor and product shortages, and continuing squabbles over a host of issues from fishing to banking―are now paying the price."
Foreign Affairs
About the Author
Michel Barnier was the chief Brexit negotiator for the European Union and head of the European Commission's Task Force for Relations with the United Kingdom.
Product details
- Publisher : Polity; 1st edition (27 Sept. 2021)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 450 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1509550860
- ISBN-13 : 978-1509550869
- Dimensions : 16.26 x 4.32 x 23.11 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 120,685 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer reviews:
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This book is possibly something of a ‘marmite book’ – if you are a brexiteer you are going to hate it, and if you are not, then it is going to clearly demonstrate to you that the UK did not have many cards at all, let alone all of them. And clearly the EU did not need the UK more than vice versa. The position of the EU was largely that it was the UK who left the EU, not the EU who had left the UK – and in consequence, the EU really did not need to offer the UK anything – let alone allow it to cherry pick and retain the aspects of EU membership that suited it, whilst not being obliged to comply with the rules.
Michele Barnier describes in great detail the thought and attention which went into the composition of his team, and of their clear objectives – in stark contrast to the UK who at best ‘winged things’. The now famous photograph of David Davis’ team prepared with nothing more than a smile, opposite the EU team replete with reams of page marked folders pretty well sums up much of the British approach. At least Davis turned up that day.
The EU objectives were very simple. The maintenance of the single market and it’s fundamental principles; protection of the rights of citizens; consciousness of the impact of Brexit on the island of Ireland; and the insistence that a country could not retain the benefits of membership having chosen to leave the EU.
Notwithstanding the red lines that Theresa May drew up which boxed the UK into a very tight corner and closed many doors, Michele Barnier is quite sympathetic towards her, and laments that she spent more time having to deal with those in her own party whose interests were more related to their own fortunes than the benefit of the UK.
It is possibly not necessary to say more about the efforts of team Johnson than they were often viewed as opportunistic, bombastic, naïve and childish.
All in all, this is a very good chronicle which details an episode of enormous self-harm by a country - who clearly had not thought through, or been prepared to fully accept the consequences of its decision to impose political, social and economic sanctions upon itself.
The story it tells is very clear. Britain voted for Brexit against the wishes of most of its elected representatives who were then stuck with the task of implementing it. Bit like the Parliamentary Labour Party trying to work out what to do with Jeremy Corbyn, if you think about it.
Fortunately for the Brexiteers the man who according to David Cameron only embraced the Brexit cause in order to make a name for himself, Boris Johnson, graciously declared himself available to lead Britain through this unenviable situation.
I can’t pretend to have read every word of this book but I paid careful attention as I slowly went through and developed the clear impression that even the avowed Brexiteers responsible for the negotiating role, mainly Theresa May, Boris Johnson, David Davis, David Frost and Olly Robbins, perhaps the only one with clear vision, all tried to retain the advantages of remaining in the single market without having anyone say that that was what they were doing in reality.
They liked the idea of Brexit but not the reality of it which is why they were incredibly obstructive from start to finish.
Having said this Barnier and the other Europeans involved had a lot of respect for Theresa May:
‘It’s madness to see the extent to which the future of this great country, and our relationship with it, has for three years now been dependent upon the bickering, backstabbing, serial betrayals and thwarted ambitions of a handful of Conservative Party MPs.
Boris Johnson….will, along with David Cameron and a few others, carry a real burden of responsibility in their country’s history.’
May had, felt Barnier, an integrity quite lacking in some of her colleagues and he admired her courage in facing her own Party.
Barnier acknowledges as we all must that at the end of the day Brexit was never about economics but about sovereignty, about dying in ruins so long as the last dust of the Empire can still be sniffed (my words not Barnier’s!).
For the record I should state that in 1974 or whenever it was I voted against joining the EEC as it then was. But that was another time. Having joined, having divorced ourselves economically from the Commonwealth and married ourselves to Europe in so many ways we are now asserting our links to a past that no longer exists.