Andy Halls
8 May 2019, 0:01
Updated: 8 May 2019, 10:15
THERESA May is labelled “insane” and “pathetic” by the EU’s chief Brexit negotiators in a damaging BBC fly-on-the-wall film.
Brexit: Behind Closed Doors shows members of the European Parliament’s Brexit coordinating team, led by Belgian Guy Verhofstadt, mocking Britain and launching foul-mouthed rants at the PM.
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When Guillaume McLaughlin, Verhofstadt’s chief of staff, is told that a Brexit deal is off because Mrs May hasn’t cleared the details with DUP leader Arlene Foster, he rages: “What the f*** is wrong with her. That’s insane. ‘I don’t know, I haven’t spoken to her?’ That’s ridiculous. Pathetic, pathetic.”
Watching Mrs May give her Tory party conference leader’s speech, in which she says she wants a deal, McLaughlin shouts at the screen: “Oh, f*** off.”
He is backed up by Edel Rettman Crosse, Verhofstadt’s top aide.
After a row over the Irish border question with Leave-supporting MP Andrew Rosindell, she tells Verhofstadt: “I’m most proud of you when you take on a Tory. He was a f***er.”
She adds: “I was delighted. You should shoe the f***er out. He’s playing an emotional game.” After a meeting with David Davis, then Brexit secretary, Crosse says his “head in the f***ing clouds.” She then sneers at the “war spirit” invoked by the PM in her speech.
The two-part BBC4 series, which begins on Wednesday, shows Verhofstadt and EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier mocking Britain.
When Mrs May arrived on stage at her conference twerking to Dancing Queen, Verhofstadt backs a suggestion that Barnier should walk on to The Winner Takes It All.
Roberto Gualtieri, Italian member of the European Parliament’s Brexit Steering Group, says: “When Barnier enters, we should play The Winner Takes It All.”
Verhofstadt then adds: “That would be sexier.”
Elmar Brok, a German Christian Democrat MEP, says the EU must do nothing to help Britain whilst the country is “in a mess.” “They have to come to us,” he urges.
Belgian filmmaker Lode Desmet was given exclusive access to Verhofstadt, and his close knit team, for two years.
Michel Barnier, asking whether the EU should negotiate with then Brexit Secretary David David or Downing Street adviser Olly Robbins, says his team needs someone “stable, available and reliable” to talk to.
Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s Brexit boss, sarcastically replies: “We can’t ask too much of Britain, don’t overdo it.”
The Sun Says
NO more repugnant figure struts the corridors of Brussels than the curtain-haired slimeball Guy Verhofstadt.
Try as they might, even the drunk Juncker or the peacock Barnier cannot match the Belgian’s detestable blabbermouthed arrogance
And his top aide plainly shares his superiority complex. “I’m most proud of you when you take on a Tory and win,” coos Edel Rettman Crosse sycophantically to her ageing boss. “You should shoot the f***ers out.”
“That’s the game,” replies Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s Brexit chief.
So it wasn’t just Britain they set out to humiliate. It was Tories specifically.
Indeed the new fly-on-the-wall EU documentary is a revealing portrait of the pompous, sneering, undemocratic bureaucrats 17.4million of us voted to leave: mocking Brexit, our country, even our “war spirit”. That’s right, the war spirit that served us well as we helped to liberate Europe from Nazi tyranny.
But for an insight into Verhofstadt’s blinkered stupidity look no further than a remark he made only yesterday.
Turkey, he said, was “drifting towards dictatorship” as its president orders the re-run of an election he lost.
Precisely as Brussels does with its own defeats and is desperate to do with Brexit.
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