Broadcast stalwart Andrew Neil has claimed Donald Trump’s one-sided tariff agreement with the EU proves that Britain’s Brexit negotiators were “hapless” and “feeble” when trying to get the best deal for the UK after the referendum. The US President secured a 15% tariff on almost all EU exports to America last week, in a deal that has prompted outcry across the bloc.
French Prime Minister François Bayrou branded Ms von der Leyen’s agreement a “submission” to Washington, adding that it was a “dark day” for the EU. While Hungarian PM Viktor Orban accused the EU Commission President of being a “featherweight” who had been “eaten for breakfast” by Mr Trump. Even Guy Verhofstadt, the Belgian arch-europhile, attacked Ms von der Leyen’s deal with the US President as a “disaster”.
Mr Verhofstadt appeared to summarise the EU reaction to the deal, by adding that the US appeared to have “not made one concession”. In the wake of Europe’s incredulity to the agreement, former BBC This Week host Mr Neil said in the MailOnline: “It makes you wonder why British politicians didn’t play similar hardball during the Brexit talks.
“After all, 14% of EU exports go to Britain – not as much as goes to America, but a massive chunk nevertheless. And, of course, we run a huge trade deficit with the EU.”
He added: “So the EU had a lot to lose in the Brexit talks just as it had a lot to lose in the current talks with Trump. Yet at no stage did a British prime minister ever try to leverage that fact in anything like the plain-speaking manner Trump has just employed.
“Instead the Brexit negotiations got off to a terrible start with the hapless, feeble Theresa May and never really recovered. From then on we seemed reconciled to punishment-beating and made no attempt to assert our strengths. It was the signal failure of the British political establishment in modern times, from which Brexit has suffered ever since.
“By the time our negotiators discovered their bottle (after Boris Johnson won the 2019 General Election by a landslide) it was too late. The deal was effectively done, the punishment beating complete.”