THERESA LETS RIP
After Eurocrat Juncker threw insults at UK, a furious Mrs May confronted him ... and (after two years of holding her tongue) she didn’t pull her punches
A FURIOUS Theresa May confronted EU chief Jean- Claude Juncker yesterday after he was accused of branding her ‘nebulous’.
Wielding her handbag, the Prime Minister publicly took the European Commission head – with whom she has spent two years patiently negotiating – to task at a Brussels summit.
But yesterday Mr Juncker insisted the two leaders had made up and Mrs May even kissed him.
He claimed he had used the word ‘nebulous’ to describe the Brexit debate in Britain more generally.
Meanwhile, EU Council chief Donald Tusk claimed the EU has treated Mrs May with more respect than her own MPs have. In other developments:
Mrs May warned EU leaders she would let her MPs kill off her Brexit deal next week unless they agreed to consider further concessions on the Irish border issue;
A minister called for Brexit to be delayed until after the planned date of March 29 to give Mrs May more time to pass a leaving deal;
Cabinet Minister Amber Rudd said Tory MPs should stop throwing abuse at each other to prevent the UK economy ‘crashing on the rocks’ after a no-deal Brexit;
Brussels said British holidaymakers will have to pay £6.30 every three years to travel to EU countries after Brexit.
Mrs May confronted Mr Juncker as EU leaders sat down for the start of the second day of a crunch summit in Brussels. At a press conference the night before he had appeared to accuse the Prime Minister of being ‘nebulous and imprecise’ over her demands for the customs backstop.
According to lip-reading experts, she told him yesterday: ‘What did you call me? You called me nebulous. Yes, you did. Nebulous. Yes, you did.’ Mr Juncker apparently replied, ‘ No I didn’t, I didn’t,’ before raising his hand as if pleading Mrs May to stop. Footage shows Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte having to break up the heated exchange. Mr Juncker later described Mrs May as a ‘friend’ during a later press conference at which he insisted he had not personally attacked her.
He said: ‘She thought I did criticise her by saying yesterday night that the British position was nebulous. I did not refer to her but the overall state of the debate in Britain. I was following the debate in the House of Commons and I can’t see where the British Parliament is heading, and that’s why I was saying it’s nebulous.
‘So it was not, I was not addressing her, and of course in the morning, having checked what I said, she was kissing me.’
He added: ‘Theresa May is a good friend for us, we have the highest respect for the British Prime Minister because she has to deliver a very difficult job.’
Mr Tusk, referring to the confidence vote in Mrs May’s leadership this week, said: ‘My impression is we in fact have treated Prime Minister May with much greater empathy and respect than some British MPs, for sure.’
Yesterday the Prime Minister described the heated exchange with Mr Juncker as a ‘robust discussion’, adding: ‘I think that’s the sort of discussion you’re able to have when you have developed a working relationship and you work well together.’ Mr Juncker’s comments also sparked a backlash among his Brussels colleagues. According to one source, Mr Tusk’s team were ‘livid’.