Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Europe’s leaders must wake up to Juncker’s games

Jean-Claude Juncker is a ‘preposterous oaf’, according to the Sun. The paper says that, particularly on this side of the Channel, people shouldn’t care much about what he thinks. Yet ‘diehard Remainers’ continue to treat his word as gospel and ‘seize on Juncker’s every self-serving snippet as “evidence” of our Government’s failings’. Yes, there are some ‘reservations’ with how ministers are dealing with Brexit. But the papers published this month on Brexit by the Government actually look ‘eminently reasonable’ – a stark contrast from the ‘childish, posturing amateurs in Brussels’.

Juncker isn’t the only one to have criticised the British government’s attitude towards Brexit in the last few days. The EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier also joined in, telling the UK to ‘start behaving “seriously”’. ‘Who do they think they are?’, asks the Telegraph. The paper is slightly kinder than the Sun, calling the pair ‘two unelected apparatchiks’, who, it says, show just why so many are turning against the EU.

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