Chips are down for Potato Head
MONSIEUR Potato Head is wearing his angry eyes. Charles Michel is on the warpath in the furious row between Brussels and Westminster over Covid vaccine exports.
The EU Council President acquired his “Patate” nickname in his native Belgium due to a supposed resemblance to the spudlike children’s toy.
To rub the point home, protesters once pelted him with chips and mayonnaise. But his bust-up with Boris Johnson is threatening to end even more messily.
Mr Michel this week accused the UK Government of deliberately withholding vaccine stocks from the EU. He claimed ministers had imposed an “outright ban on the export of vaccines or vaccine components produced on their territory”.
His outburst, which he failed to back up with evidence, provoked a curt response from the Government. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab described the claim as “completely false” and summoned an EU diplomat to his office for a rebuke. Mr Johnson took the unusual step of repeating the rebuke in a statement at the start of Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday.
Yet Mr Michel is refusing to back down. Without explaining the allegation, the top Eurocrat insisted there were “different ways” of restricting exports.
LESS than three months after the end of the UK’s transition out of EU rule, relations between Brussels and Westminster are heading for the deep freeze. Senior Eurocrats are desperate to show that the UK cannot expect an easy life outside the bloc.They want to show leaving their club brings many disadvantages.
Mr Michel is doing his master’s bidding in accusing the UK of “vaccine nationalism”. The former prime minister of Belgium, a liberal with a fondness for black turtleneck sweaters, won his post at the top of the bureaucracy thanks to the support of his ally, Emmanuel Macron. Some Brussels officials regard the Eurocrat as the French president’s poodle.
President Macron is understood to be seething that his attempt to sabotage Mr Johnson’s UK-EU trade deal failed. He wants the bloc to be uncompromising in any future dealings with the UK.
EU diplomats have signalled that Brussels will not countenance any negotiations to alter the malfunctioning customs rules applied to Northern Ireland or drop their ban on British shellfish. They believe UK ministers have not fully grasped the full extent of the change in cross-Channel relations brought by Brexit. Mr Johnson and his team will have to get used to hearing the word “no” from Brussels as the price for leaving the bloc, EU insiders suggest.
Senior Tories are understood to be relaxed about the EU bluster, although they are keen to correct blatant inaccuracies such as Mr Michel’s claims about a vaccine ban. They see his rantings as symptoms of a crisis within the EU, where the sluggish vaccine rollout has exposed its deficiencies.
Mr Michel is understood to have fallen out with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The EU’s two chief bureaucrats are seen as competing in their attempts to be the most outspoken defenders of the European federalist dream against the Brexiteer upstarts across the Channel.
Yet their jibes at the UK do not appear to be fooling European voters. Opinion polls in Germany and other EU nations suggest citizens overwhelmingly blame Brussels and their own governments for the slow vaccine rollout on the continent.
Mr Michel and his strutting patron Mr Macron should expect the bloc’s failings to encourage the growth of Eurosceptic sentiment across the EU.
Their hopes of reviving the popularity of their dream of a united European superstate once the pesky Brits had left is fading fast.