We’re 1019 days in. It should be safe to assume that by now most British MPs know their way around the Brexit shambles.
Well it should be, but it isn’t.
This deep in, you’d think that politicians in the UK would be well versed in the machinations of the negotiation – or at the least, they’d take an interest in the who’s who on the European side.
But Brexit, it seems, is entirely anglo-centric. The focus of both Labour and Tory MPs is on the political power struggle within the United Kingdom, rather than the one without. Talking to the EU is seen as Theresa May’s job.
You can see a hint of this on Twitter. As per Politico, out of 579 MPs active on the platform, only 55 follow one of the most influential EU officials involved in Brexit. In fact, more MPs follow the unofficial account of the Downing Street cat, Larry, than the woman who reportedly wrote most of the deal the prime minister has tried and failed to get voted through the House of Commons.
So just who is this important but under-appreciated woman? Meet Sabine Weyand, the 54-year-old German who has helped shape Britain’s possible future.
“The problem about the EU,” said former foreign minister Boris Johnson at a conference in New Delhi last month, “is that we don’t really know who’s running it.” Johnson was talking about the European Union’s bureaucrats, or in his words, “particular bastards” that he wanted to “kick out”.
Weyand is one of these “bastards”.
She has 15 years of experience as a civil servant in the EU, and was on the staff of former Commission President, José Manuel Barroso. Since September 2016 she’s been acting as the deputy to chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier.
German media describes Weyand as a pleasant person prone to laughter, but in Brussels (and the UK), she’s known for her sharp analytical and no-nonsense negotiation style. “I would really not want to be on the opposite side of the negotiating table,” an EU diplomat told the Guardian in January. An unnamed civil servant in Politico last year called Weyand “a kamikaze for the cause. She will die for it.”
In Weyand’s own words to the magazine: “My job looks like this: Britain is leaving the EU - and we need to organize this in a way that causes as little damage as possible. (...) People who work for the EU usually want to build something. We’re in the process of dismantling something here. That may be frustrating at times, but everyone knows it needs to be managed professionally.”
To Weyand that meant crafting what German chancellor Angela Merkel recently has called “a diplomatic piece of art”: the withdrawal agreement between the European Union and the British government. In the UK, it’s known as Theresa May’s deal – in the EU, it’s associated with Weyand, who is said to have crafted the document’s legal language on almost every page.
During a podium discussion in January, Weyand herself said the deal “creates certainty, where Brexit has created uncertainty.” At this point, May had already failed to get the agreement ratified by parliament. “For me, this is like snatching defeat from the jaws of victory,” Weyand told the audience. “A lot of the discussion in the UK is actually uninhibited by the knowledge of what’s actually in the withdrawal agreement.” She could have added: or who wrote it.
Granted, Johnson has a point: it is hard to keep track of who is running things in the EU. There is the Commission, lead by Jean-Claude Juncker; the EU parliament with its 715 MEPs; the European Council, which is made up of the heads of state and presided over by Donald Tusk; as well as the Council of the European Union, a forum for government ministers which is led by a different member state every six month.
In addition, there are close to 40,000 civil servants working for the EU – and only one of them is Sabine Weyand.
That’s no excuse to ignore her work, though. She’s not hiding in Brussels’ back chambers, she’s out there - and active on Twitter. If Johnson cared to follow Weyand, he’d have gained some interesting insights from an EU perspective on the contents of the withdrawal agreement he opposed until not so long ago. Alas, like 524 of his colleagues in parliament, he currently doesn’t.
There’s still time to change that - especially now that May has accepted a Brexit delay until Halloween. No matter the kind of exit model discussed during the next phase of negotiations, Sabine Weyand will be at the heart of the debate on the European side.
For MPs, knowing her way of thinking - or, at least, her Twitter account – will go a long way.