Brexit dept head leaves as tensions expose UK Cabinet chaos
18 Sep 2017 5:48 PM GMT
London: One of Britain's senior-most Brexit officials was today shunted to the Cabinet Office after just over a year in the job, in what marks the latest row to hit the UK government's divorce from the European Union.
Oliver Robbins has been moved to 10 Downing Street from the Department for Exiting the European Union (DexEU) to take on a new "coordinating" role, which will see him work more closely with Prime Minister Theresa May.
"In order to strengthen cross government coordination of the next phase of negotiations with the European Union, the Prime Minister has appointed Oliver Robbins as her EU Adviser in the Cabinet Office, in addition to his role as EU Sherpa," a DexEU statement said.
"He will continue to lead the official-side UK team in the negotiations, working closely with the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, and coordinate relations with the European Commission and Member States," it noted.
However, the main reason behind the shift is being attributed to tensions between him and Brexit secretary David Davis. The change at the top of the Brexit pecking order within government is also being seen as a way for May to take on greater control of the negotiations after days of rows over the issue within her own Cabinet.
The latest set of wrangles were triggered over the weekend with a 4,000-word article by UK foreign secretary Boris Johnson reviving his claims that the country's National Health Service (NHS) would be 350 million pounds a week richer as a result of Brexit.
While this figure has come under dispute since he first used it during the Vote Leave campaign in the lead up to the EU referendum last year, his decision to re-open the debate is being widely seen as a blatant leadership challenge to Theresa May by trying to take centre-stage within the Brexit debate.
"Once we have settled our accounts, we will take back control of roughly 350 million pounds per week. It would be a fine thing, as many of us have pointed out, if a lot of that money went on the NHS," he wrote in The Daily Telegraph.
The article, in which Johnson also said he opposed paying the EU to secure temporary access to the single market during a transitional phase.
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