May’s Brexit negotiator ‘jumps before he’s pushed’ ahead of new PM’s arrival

CONTROVERSIAL civil servant Olly Robbins has resigned as Britain’s chief Brexit negotiator ahead of an expected Boris Johnson premiership, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

He is to leave Government for a lucrative job in the City before the country’s new Prime Minister takes power next month.

Our revelation comes as Mr Johnson prepares to launch a ‘day one’ Brexit blitz that would see Whitehall put on an immediate No Deal ‘warfooting’. Mr Johnson’s ‘transition team’ – headed by Ministers Matt Hancock, Oliver Dowden and Rishi Sunak – are preparing to request Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and EU Brexit chief Michel Barnier come to Downing Street to reopen Brexit negotiations immediately.

The new Prime Minister will take office on July 25 – exactly 100 days before Mr Johnson has said Britain will leave the EU on October 31. A source said: ‘No one will be able to accuse us of dragging our feet, when the offer of fresh talks to avoid No Deal will be there from the off.’

As the man who secured Theresa May’s doomed Brexit deal on the ground in Brussels, Mr Robbins, pictured, is seen as a bogeyman by many of Mr Johnson’s supporters.

Brexiteers have blamed Mrs May’s personal EU adviser and head of the Cabinet Office’s powerful Europe Unit for softening the terms of Britain’s exit and failing to demand concessions on the hated Northern Irish ‘backstop’. They have also pointed to Mr Robbins’s support for a federal European system during his student days at Oxford. Last night one Whitehall source said that Mr Robbins had ‘jumped before he was pushed’.