Michel Barnier strode on stage at the EU headquarters in Brussels yesterday, a model, as ever, of self-satisfied Gallic charm. He looked calm and well rested. So relaxed, in fact, he could have just returned from a weekend sipping ice-cool highballs on Pampelonne beach.
What a contrast here at Westminster, where our exhausted Prime Minister looks as though she hasn’t slept on her own pillow for weeks, let alone been anywhere near the French Riviera.
Negotiation is a finely balanced art of bluff and deception, and although wily Monsieur Barnier is not a man you would trust to share a bottle of water with crossing a desert, the sad truth is he has run rings around us from the get-go.
Michel Barnier (pictured) addresses a press conference at the end of a general affairs council on Article 50 negotiations on Tuesday
Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May returns to Downing Street on Monday, amidst desperate attempts to get her Brexit deal through the Commons
One of his most irritating tricks has been to portray himself as someone who regards the whole Brexit hullabaloo as a mere passing irritant, a mind-numbing piece of bureaucracy clogging up his in-tray. Negotiations? Bof! A tedious aside that his diary secretary has squeezed in between a postprandial game of pétanque and his early evening cinq à sept.
Here he was again, goading the British Government, expressing doubts about Theresa May’s chances of getting her deal through. Not, of course, he seemed to imply that he was much bothered.
‘Everyone should now finalise for a No Deal scenario,’ he told his audience. Nor did the Commons voting to stop us leaving without a deal make any difference. ‘Voting against a No Deal does not prevent from it happening,’ he scoffed.
Note how our own guileless leaders stew like autumn Bramleys over the idea of No Deal, whereas the oily Barnier treats the prospect with casual froggy
