The Bank Holiday Brexit peace was shattered in spectacular fashion after details of Theresa May’s apparently disastrous Downing Street dinner with Jean-Claude Juncker emerged.
German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine today printed a devastating insider account of the meeting between the Prime Minister and the EU Commission President from last Wednesday, with the over-arching theme being that Theresa May is deluding herself over Brexit.
The Twitterati, however, appeared to get the gist of the piece via a thread dashed off by The Economist’s Berlin Bureau chief, Jeremy Cliffe.
The details, briefed by senior Commission sources, reveal Juncker told May as he left that he was “ten times more skeptical than I was before” about securing a good Brexit deal.
May was accused of living in another galaxy, and the Prime Minister had to be reminded the EU is not a golf club as she claimed the UK did not legally owe any money in a ‘divorce bill’.
To make the point that Brexit would be complicated, Juncker reportedly pulled two piles of paper from his bag: Croatia’s EU entry deal and Canada’s free trade deal.
Twitter largely reacted with a collective gulp.
The full thread is here, though May has dismissed the report as “Brussels gossip”.
Some reacted with humour.
Though others suggested we need some perspective.
But perhaps the most the extreme reaction came from writer Tony Parsons, who made allusions to the Second World War.
Parsons, a writer for the NME in the late-1970s turned tabloid columnist and novelist, has been outspoken in his support for Brexit. Most felt they needed to correct him, however.