Last month Steerpike revealed which politicians are set to release books after putting their respective lockdowns to good use. But it appeared Mr S missed one looming literary attraction – the release of Michel Barnier’s forthcoming memoirs about the Brexit talks. Barnier, who held the role of the European Union’s chief Brexit negotiator between 2016 and 2021, is releasing his ‘secret journal’ tomorrow in which he focuses on the role of Conservative infighting shaped Britain’s departure from the EU.
Thus far, the main revelations trailed in today’s newspapers include the bombshells that (shock) the Frenchman was repelled by Johnson’s ‘baroque personality’ and that the former mayor of London was ‘not serious’ in Barnier’s eyes. One episode that seems straight out of Bridget Jones’s Diary is when Britain’s top negotiator David Frost turned up 45 minutes late for lunch, apparently without explanation, while in another the now ennobled Frost temporarily walked away from the negotiation table on the grounds that ‘to save face, he therefore creates drama.’
Barnier’s book has been puffed up in respectful and worthy terms – as befits a work that has been universally described
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