Britain’s top Brexit negotiator has a copper neck, says May’s former aide

Theresa May’s former chief of staff has accused the UK’s chief Brexit negotiator, David Frost, of having a “brass neck” after he said the UK government had “blinked first” in negotiations. Gavin Barwell, a key member of the former prime minister’s negotiating team, said Boris Johnson’s withdrawal agreement was “95% the work of his predecessors” and a deal had only been secured by conceding to the EU’s demand for some customs checks between Northern Ireland and the rest of Great Britain, which May’s team had not agreed to. Lord Frost, who will host another crunch round of negotiations in London this week with the EU’s Michel Barnier, told the Mail on Sunday that the UK would leave at the end of the transition period in December “come what may” and would not agree to being a “client state.” Informal talks between the pair have not yielded any breakthrough in what one EU diplomat said was “a wasted summer”. Barwell was angered by comments by Frost in the interview in which he said:“We came in after a government and negotiating team that had blinked and had its bluff called at critical moments and the EU had learned not to take our [...]

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