Why did PM’s aide tell her Chequers was ‘game changer’?

THERESA May’s EU adviser last night faced questions about his role in the Salzburg summit after he assured the Prime Minister that her Chequers plan would be a success.

Amid shock and anger over the rejection of her deal by the EU yesterday, Olly Robbins’s name was repeatedly mentioned. The senior civil servant,

who Mrs May appointed as her personal Brexit adviser last year, helped draw up the Chequers strategy, which is threatening to split her party.

Earlier this month he assured the PM that EU leaders thought her Brexit plan was a ‘game changer’. He indicated that his attempts to sell the proposals to the remaining EU 2 member states had been a success.

The wholesale rejection of the Chequers blueprint yesterday – just over a week before the Tory party conference – will make the PM’s job even more difficult.

As a furious Mrs May returned to London, pressure was mounting on the man she trusted to be her ‘eyes and ears’ in Brussels.

Mr Robbins, 43, joined her team a year ago as part of a move by Number 10 to exert more control over the Brexit negotiations.

He repeatedly clashed with then Brexit secretary David Davis, and was said to have suggested that he should be the opposite number to Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator. Earlier this month, Mr Robbins refused to say whether he believed leaving the EU would be a ‘good thing’.

A Europhile since his days at Oxford University, he became private secretary to Tony Blair aged just 31. He was steadily promoted before becoming an adviser to Mrs May and taking the helm of the Brexit negotiations. This summer, it emerged that Mrs May’s right-hand man was paid a bonus of up to £20,000 despite the chaos surrounding the Brexit strategy.

The PM personally signed off on the money, which comes on top of Mr Robbins’s bumper pay packet of up to £165,000 a year.

But his performance in selling the Chequers deal to the EU will raise questions about his future.