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Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, told Theresa May after dinner with her on 26 April, ‘I’m leaving Downing Street ten times more sceptical than I was before,’ according to an account in Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. At the dinner, also attended by Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, and David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, Mrs May was said to have declared that Britain was not legally obliged to pay the EU ‘a penny’; Mr Juncker said ‘the EU is not a golf club’ with a subscription that could be cancelled at any time. ‘Let us make Brexit a success,’ May is said to have remarked, to which Mr Juncker replied: ‘Brexit cannot be a success.’ The next day, Mr Juncker got up early to ring Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and tell her that Mrs May was ‘deluded’ and ‘living in another galaxy’. Mrs May described the account as ‘Brussels gossip’. She later said: ‘I was described by one of my colleagues as a bloody difficult woman. And I said at the time the next person to find that out will be Jean-Claude Juncker.’ Mr Davis said Britain would not pay a €100 billion EU bill that suddenly plopped on to the table via the Financial Times.
The general election campaign was characterised chiefly by Mrs May repeating the phrase ‘Strong and stable government’. She also ate chips in Cornwall. On the first day of George Osborne’s editorship, the Evening Standard said Mrs May’s election campaign might become ‘no more than a slogan’. In a radio interview, Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, said Labour would recruit 10,000 more police for £300,000. When this was queried she said it would cost £80 million. Jeremy Corbyn later said it would cost £300 million.
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