After three years of turning up in Brussels only to be exiled to another room while the other 27 EU leaders ate a three-course meal and dissected Britain’s post-Brexit plans, Theresa May finally said her not-so-fond au revoir to the European stage on Sunday evening at her last summit, admitting in her typically low-key way that there had been some “tough and long discussions about Brexit” along the way. Here is a rundown of her visits in Brussels’ version of the Big Brother house.
Start as you mean to go on
It started with a “pfff”. Asked about May’s Brexit comments at her first EU summit, the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, gave a gallic shrug and did his impression of a tyre with a slow puncture.
In October 2016, three months after becoming leader of the Conservative party and taking the keys to Downing Street, the then unknown quantity that was the second female UK prime minister had arrived in Brussels – and treated the 27 other heads of state and government to their first blast of Maybot.
In a five-minute slot at 1am, after a six-hour session on the migration crisis and Russian aggression in Syria, May delivered her “clear message” that the UK was leaving the EU but would play a full role until that point. “We had no special event with Theresa May,” said Junker.
Alone with the plant pots
Staring at an empty table with only a row of plant pots for company, the image of a dejected-looking May at the October 2017 European council offered a neat pictorial summary of the state of the Brexit negotiations that autumn.
Britain was desperate to move on from talking about the withdrawal agreement – citizens’ rights, the divorce bill and the Irish border – and on to talks about the future trade relationship. The EU felt that “insufficient progress” had been made.
Juncker used a summit press conference to deny reports that May had pleaded for her political life at a recent dinner and was “anxious”, “tormented”, “despondent and discouraged”. She had been in “good shape” and “fighting”, Juncker insisted.
Humiliated
The prime minister had weathered the resignations of her Brexit secretary, David Davis, and her foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, after unveiling her Chequers plan for the future relationship with the EU that summer. The EU27 joining her in September 2018 at a meeting in Salzburg in the Austrian alps had intended to offer warm words as the British prime minister sought to finalise the withdrawal agreement in Brussels, and then try to sell it at home.
Instead, provoked by an ill-thought-out editorial from the prime minister published in a German newspaper accusing the EU of demanding the unacceptable over Northern Ireland, the leaders went on the attack. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, ripped up Chequers. “Those who explain that we can easily live without Europe, that everything is going to be all right, and that it’s going to bring a lot of money home are liars,” said Macron.
Later an image circulated via Instagram. A cake had been offered to a few leaders and their aides, including May. “A piece of cake, perhaps? Sorry, no cherries,” read the caption alongside the picture of May and the European council president, Donald Tusk. With relations soured, Tusk was accused in the media, to his horror, of mocking the diabetic British prime minister. The next day, back in Downing Street, May made a statement asking for mutual respect.
Nebulous, moi?
“You called me nebulous?” It was 14 December 2018, and a few moments before the European council – the EU’s 28 leaders – were to sit down to discuss the issues of the day.
It was unclear whether the prime minister was aware but the TV cameras had yet to be turned out of the summit room. May made a beeline for Juncker. “What did you call me? You called me nebulous.” “No I didn’t, no I didn’t”, responded a startled European commission president.
Juncker had hours earlier used exactly that word to describe the negotiating positions emerging from Britain.
“We were not dancing … she thought that I did criticise her,” Juncker later admitted of their “robust discussion”. “And in the course of the morning after having checked what I said yesterday night, she was kissing me,” he added with a smile.
Awkward
The emergence of the former Dutch foreign minister Frans Timmermans as front runner to replace Juncker as the next European commission president leaves May in a tricky spot. Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia looked likely to try to block Timmermans as he has been a strident advocate for the rule of law in countries where it has been threatened in his role as vice president of the commission. Italy’s populist government could go the same way, leaving May with a casting vote. She arrived at the summit and lived up to the dramatic moment by promising to be “constructive”.
