Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Sir Ivan Rogers paints a more optimistic picture of Brexit

Sir Ivan Rogers has earned himself a reputation as something of a Brexit bogeyman. Admittedly the UK’s former ambassador to the EU didn’t help matters with his pointed 1,400 resignation email in which he attacked the Prime Minister for her ‘muddled thinking’. That broadside was interpreted as a dyed-in-the-wool Europhile doing his best to be disruptive; it also resulted in the tabloids calling him ‘Ivan the terrible’. To make matters worse, Rogers – who has now retired from the civil service – was also fingered as the one to blame for David Cameron’s dismal deal he secured in the run-up to the referendum. As Katy Balls pointed out, in Tim Shipman’s Brexit book All Out War, Cameron’s aides complained that Rogers dominated the negotiation process and was too quick to take ‘no’ for an answer.

Yet at the Commons European Scrutiny Committee this morning, we saw something of a different Rogers. It is true that he made some points which will have left his critics riled.

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