Look who’s back! Mandy, Lord of the Remoaners: ANDREW PIERCE the principal players at the secret ‘make Brexit work better’ summit
- It was surely the most remarkable cross-party summit in recent political history
- So who were the principal players at the Oxfordshire pow-wow?
It was surely the most remarkable cross-party summit in recent political history.
At Ditchley Park last week, shadow minister David Lammy – who previously likened some Brexiteers to Nazis – and other Remainers mingled with a smattering of Tories to ‘address Brexit’s failings’.
Details of the ‘secret’ two-day gathering were leaked to the Europhile Observer newspaper yesterday. So who were the principal players at the Oxfordshire pow-wow? Andrew Pierce has the details…
Lord Mandelson, 69
Ditchley is hardly the first time the silky architect of New Labour has been spotted speaking to figures on both sides of the Brexit schism. In 2019, he organised a caviar and oysters dinner for Michael Gove (then Tory environment secretary) to meet ‘investors’ and ‘corporates’ to discuss whether Brexit was an ‘opportunity for green investment’.
PICTURED: Lord Mandelson, 69
The dinner at Wiltons in London’s St James’s was organised by Mandelson’s Global Counsel outfit, which helps big businesses ‘navigate politics, business and policymaking’. Mandelson – who readers will remember resigned in disgrace from two Labour cabinets – was also a key figure in the campaign for a second referendum.
Indeed, he has opined that if MPs had only backed Theresa May’s failed ‘Chequers plan’ for Brexit, ‘Parliament could have attached a second referendum to that deal’. Mandelson, a former EU commissioner who speaks regularly to Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, even trousers a £31,000 annual pension from the EU.
There’s no question he would relish Britain returning to the bloc.
David Lammy, 50
Following the 2016 referendum, the Shadow Foreign Secretary became increasingly hysterical in his refusal to accept the Brexit vote. Indeed, he was one of the first Labour MPs to call for the public’s decision to be overturned by Parliament – bizarrely insisting the referendum was ‘not binding’.
In 2019, he claimed most MPs privately regard Brexit as a ‘con, a trick, a swindle and a fraud’.
PICTURED: David Lammy, 50
Inevitably, Lammy ardently backed a second referendum and has claimed that Russian interference in the Brexit vote was ‘beyond reasonable doubt’, without providing any evidence for this suggestion. Disgracefully, he also branded the pro-Brexit European Research Group of MPs as akin to the Nazis and supporters of South Africa’s apartheid system.
Now that Lammy serves in Starmer’s cabinet, he is toeing the party’s agreed line on ‘making Brexit work’.
And his political judgment seems little better: he nominated Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour leadership in 2015 – something he now says he regrets.
Sir Olly Robbins, 47
To ardent Brexiteers, Robbins is the great betrayer. They blame him squarely for a raft of concessions to Brussels when he was Theresa May’s chief Brexit negotiator from 2017 to 2019.
Issues from the Northern Ireland border to the £39billion ‘divorce payout’ were settled more or less on the EU’s terms.
PICTURED: Sir Olly Robbins, 47
When Boris Johnson quit Mrs May’s Cabinet over her Chequers plan, his resignation letter talked of raising the ‘white flags’ of surrender to the EU. He wasn’t accusing only the PM – his real target was Robbins, dubbed ‘May’s Rasputin’ after the influential Russian mystic who befriended the tsars before the 1917 revolution.
Robbins has been an ardent Europhile since his days at Oxford, where he was secretary of the then-fledgling Oxford Reform Club, which was established to oppose the Eurosceptic movement. Its logo was a crowned portcullis – Parliament’s emblem –shrouded by the yellow stars of the EU.
Robbins previously remarked: ‘There is no part of my personal views that will ever play a role in how I serve the Government of the day.’
Few Brexiteers believed him.
Sir Tom Scholar, 54
Even more than the staunchly pro-Remain mandarins of the Foreign Office, the Sir Humphreys of the Treasury are renowned for their devotion to the EU cause.
Sir Thomas Whinfield Scholar, until recently the most senior civil servant at the Treasury, embodies this tendency.
PICTURED:Sir Tom Scholar, 54
An avowed Remainer, he has a dismal track record when it comes to negotiating with Brussels. Notoriously in his previous post – as principal adviser on the EU to former prime minister David Cameron – he was seen as a push-over.
Previously a private secretary to Gordon Brown when he was chancellor, he then moved to Washington to become Britain’s representative on the board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
As soon as Liz Truss became PM last year, Scholar was summarily dismissed from the Treasury.
Sure enough, voices at the IMF were soon scorning Trussonomics as a ‘large and untargeted fiscal package’. It was an extraordinary statement from a body normally charged with rescuing Third World basket-case economies – and, to this day, ministers believe Scholar’s allies were to blame for this intervention.
Sir Jonathan Symonds, 61
The most prominent businessman at the secret summit, Symonds is chairman of GlaxoSmithKline – the drugs giant and life sciences group.
PICTURED: Sir Jonathan Symonds, 61
He has been wooed by a number of Labour frontbenchers during the past six months, including Wes Streeting, the ambitious shadow health secretary. After the nightmare of Jeremy Corbyn, Labour is now showing a friendly face to big business in what has been nicknamed the ‘prawn cocktail offensive 2.0’ after Tony Blair’s push to win favour in the City before the party’s 1997 landslide victory. Symonds was previously chairman of HSBC Bank plc and also worked at Goldman Sachs.
Ditchley Park, where power and plotting runs in the blood
As a location for a grand but discreet gathering of the Establishment, Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire is hard to beat.
Its website boasts that the country house has had ‘a rich history as an idyllic retreat for royalty and power’ for centuries.
As a location for a grand but discreet gathering of the Establishment, Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire is hard to beat
Elizabeth I stayed at the estate in 1592 and a portrait of the queen standing on a map of England, with her feet on Oxfordshire, was painted to commemorate her visit.
The estate was bought in 1953 by tobacco magnate Sir David Wills, who established the Ditchley Foundation to promote international relations.
But those currently involved with it seem to be Remainers. Its current chairman is Lord Hill, who warned before the vote that Brexit would not lead to a better deal on trade, and its council of management includes Lord Mandelson.
Ex-PM Sir John Major – who recently branded Brexit a ‘colossal mistake’ – is a former chairman.
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