Theresa May’s Brexit negotiator handed top Foreign Office job

A number of new Whitehall appointments have been made since the election, but there have been a couple of returning figures too. Sir Oliver Robbins is from the latter camp, with Theresa May’s former Brexit negotiator set to make a political return after accepting a top civil service job at the Foreign Office. He just can’t stay away…

As first reported by the Guardian, Robbins is the preferred choice of current Foreign Secretary David Lammy with the civil servant to replace the current permanent under-secretary at the FDCO, Sir Philip Barton. Barton announced he would be stepping down last November after a rather turbulent time in the post – and certainly not helped by the criticism he earned himself over his handling of the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 2022.

But Robbins is not a popular figure in Eurosceptic circles, given he negotiated Baroness May’s rather controversial Brexit deal with the EU – which was rejected a grand total of, er, three times in the Commons before the former prime minister resigned.