Osborne’s too gloomy about Brexit, says his former top aide
GEORGE Osborne’s former senior aide yesterday turned on his old boss and accused him of unjustified pessimism over the Brexit talks.
Rupert Harrison was nicknamed ‘the real Chancellor’ during his five years in the Treasury as Mr Osborne’s chief of staff.
Criticisms by Mr Osborne and other former Remain campaigners of the Government’s approach to negotiations with the EU were ‘too gloomy’ and ‘over the top’, he said.
He dismissed the ‘fashionable view’ that ministers had displayed a ‘lack of strategy’, and warned that the ‘main uncertainty’ about the success of Brexit was not talks with Brussels but MPs and peers in Parliament.
Writing on Twitter, he took issue with a leader column in the London Evening Standard, which is edited by Mr Osborne, and which summarised the Government’s position over Brexit as ‘we don’t know’.
He said: ‘My old boss [is] part of the consensus that is too gloomy on Brexit progress. Once [the] dust settles we will see outlines of UK position are pretty clear. Of course that’s not to say it’s all going to be fine...’
‘The approach is now quite clear’
Mr Harrison said the ‘idea there is no UK emerging position on most of these issues [is] out of date’. He added: ‘What I do take issue with at the moment is this over the top critique of everything the UK does. [It] mistakes poor communications for lack of progress.’
Mr Osborne’s former senior aide accepted that as a Remain campaigner he was worried about Britain leaving the customs union and single market.
But he said the idea that the UK could leave the EU but stay in the single market is a ‘nonstarter’. He also disagreed with Will Straw, who ran Britain Stronger in Europe, the official Remain campaign, who said the ‘main uncertainty’ over Brexit was the UK Government’s ‘lack of strategy’. Mr Harrison said: ‘That’s certainly the fashionable view – and the spectacle has been pretty bad, but out of the noise the approach is now quite clear.’
He also argued that the ‘main uncertainty now comes from the UK Parliament (fragile majority, angry Lords) not the UK-EU negotiations’.
His comments came as Downing Street dismissed claims from a former Foreign Office mandarin who claimed ministers had been ‘a bit absent’ from talks. Sir Simon Fraser, who was head of the diplomatic service from 2010 to 2015, argued before the referendum that leaving the EU would be an ‘uncharacteristic act of self-absorption’.
He said on the BBC’s Westminster Hour: ‘I don’t think negotiations have begun particularly promisingly, frankly, on the British side. We haven’t put forward a lot because … there are differences within the Cabinet about the sort of Brexit that we are heading for … it’s very difficult for us to have a clear position.’
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said No10 would ‘disagree strongly’ and argued that ‘important progress’ had been made in talks.
After leaving the Treasury in 2015, Mr Harrison, a former Eton head boy, moved to asset managers BlackRock as a managing director. Mr Osborne took a role with the firm earlier this year.