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Brexit civil servant in charge of no-deal planning quits
Tom Shinner, 33, director of policy and delivery coordination at the Department for Exiting the EU, was in charge of coordinating the domestic policy implications of Brexit across government departments to ensure a smooth exit from the EU.
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It is understood that Shinner is leaving the civil service altogether to go into the private sector.
His departure comes hot on the heels after Karen Wheeler, the official in charge of “frictionless” Brexit border planning including emergency plans for Dover and Northern Ireland in the event of no deal, left her post in Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs.
A former aide to the ex-Brexit secretary David Davis once said Shinner was so pivotal to no-deal planning that if he left his job Brexit would not happen.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/27/brexit-civil-servant-in-charge-of-no-deal-planning-quits
...
It is understood that Shinner is leaving the civil service altogether to go into the private sector.
His departure comes hot on the heels after Karen Wheeler, the official in charge of “frictionless” Brexit border planning including emergency plans for Dover and Northern Ireland in the event of no deal, left her post in Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs.
A former aide to the ex-Brexit secretary David Davis once said Shinner was so pivotal to no-deal planning that if he left his job Brexit would not happen.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/27/brexit-civil-servant-in-charge-of-no-deal-planning-quits
Well, what could possibly go wrong? Oh, whoever the next PM is:
Boris Johnson’s claims about the prospects of rewriting the Brexit deal have been compared by the European parliament’s Brexit coordinator to the “false promises, pseudo-patriotism and foreigner-bashing” he is said to have used to win the EU referendum.
The suggestion from the Conservative leadership frontrunner that he will be able to dump Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement, withhold the UK’s £39bn divorce bill and still negotiate a free-trade deal in Brussels was savaged by Guy Verhofstadt.
The former prime minister of Belgium said Johnson’s assertion during the current leadership campaign was a myth. In a withering assessment of the race between Johnson and Jeremy Hunt, who also claims he will be able to renegotiate the deal, Verhofstadt said it appeared they had “learned nothing whatsoever”.
...
Meanwhile, as Finland takes over the six-month rotating presidency of the EU, the country’s minister of European affairs, Tytti Tuppurainen, said the UK needed to “define for herself both the answers and the basic rules of the game” in the Brexit conundrum, in a sign of the growing frustration with Britain.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/27/boris-johnson-brexit-deal-claims-rubbished-guy-verhofstadt
The suggestion from the Conservative leadership frontrunner that he will be able to dump Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement, withhold the UK’s £39bn divorce bill and still negotiate a free-trade deal in Brussels was savaged by Guy Verhofstadt.
The former prime minister of Belgium said Johnson’s assertion during the current leadership campaign was a myth. In a withering assessment of the race between Johnson and Jeremy Hunt, who also claims he will be able to renegotiate the deal, Verhofstadt said it appeared they had “learned nothing whatsoever”.
...
Meanwhile, as Finland takes over the six-month rotating presidency of the EU, the country’s minister of European affairs, Tytti Tuppurainen, said the UK needed to “define for herself both the answers and the basic rules of the game” in the Brexit conundrum, in a sign of the growing frustration with Britain.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/27/boris-johnson-brexit-deal-claims-rubbished-guy-verhofstadt