A curious feature of Brexiter psychology is how the ruinous outcome they once actively sought for Britain is now blamed on tricksy European negotiators, led at the time by Michel Barnier.
And so it was wearingly predictable that his re-emergence as the likely new French prime minister would produce a tide of their usual foam-flecked outrage. “We thought we’d seen the last of ‘Monsieur Barnier’ after the Brexit negotiations – where he was determined to get Britain the worst possible deal,” said the Tory MP John Hayes, even as the former cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg declared that Barnier was “no friend of the UK”.
