The UK has lost “one of the greatest experts” it has on European matters with the sudden resignation of its ambassador to the EU, the former head of the diplomatic service has warned.

Sir Ivan Rogers stepped down on Tuesday, weeks before the start of negotiations of Brexit, using a resignation email to urge fellow British civil servants in Brussels to assert their independence by challenging “ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking”.

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Sir Simon Fraser, who was permanent secretary to the Foreign Office from 2010 to 2015, said Rogers’ departure was a significant blow to the UK before the talks on leaving the EU.

“I do think that his sort of in-depth knowledge and expertise is a loss as we go into what is going to be, as David Davis himself has said, a very complex set of negotiations,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.



Fraser said he had worked with Rogers for many years in Brussels and London: “He is a highly intelligent, knowledgable and experienced official and one of the greatest experts – if I can use the expert word – that we can have on European matters in the British civil service.”

Rogers’ departure followed reports he had angered ministers with his gloomy prognosis for the Brexit process, amid talk from pro-leave voices that he should be replaced with an ambassador who believed in what was happening.

Fraser was scathing about this idea: “When you appoint ambassadors, you don’t appoint them for what they believe, you appoint them for what they know.

“I think what we need in Brussels is someone who has the experience, who’s going to be a real professional negotiator – who will be sitting in a room with lots of other very experienced and knowledgeable negotiators, and who will be able to hold his or her own.”

However, one source said Rogers had been in discussion over his early departure since before Christmas, and was not being moved to make way for a pro-Brexiter. It is understood his replacement is expected to be a long-standing diplomat.

The European Commission said it regretted the departure of Rogers, but declined to say whether the move could cause difficulties with Brexit negotiations.

Natasha Bertaud, a spokeswoman for the Commission, said: “We regret the loss of a very professional, very knowledgeable – while not always easy – interlocutor and diplomat who always loyally defended the interests of his government.”

In an email explaining the his reasons for his abrupt departure, sent to the UK’s Brussels diplomatic staff at UKRep, the mission in Brussels, Rogers said he was leaving now to give time for his successor to take charge of the lengthy negotiations process, which starts in March. But he also made it clear that he had been frustrated by politicians who disliked his warnings about the potential pitfalls in the Brexit process.

He also revealed that the basic structure of the UK Brexit negotiating team had not yet been resolved, let alone a negotiating strategy.

Rogers wrote: “I hope you will continue to challenge ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking and that you will never be afraid to speak the truth to those in power. I hope that you will support each other in those difficult moments where you have to deliver messages that are disagreeable to those who need to hear them.”

Jonathan Powell, who was Tony Blair’s chief of staff for more than a decade and also worked with Rogers, told Today it was “really very worrying” that Rogers appeared to think he could no longer be frank with ministers.

“If they want to have somebody who’s a patsy, who agrees with them, what is the point of having an independent civil service, which is one of the key pillars of our unwritten constitution?” he said.

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However, Iain Duncan Smith, a leading Eurosceptic Conservative MP, said Rogers was among a group of civil servants who too unthinkingly accepted the word of other EU nations over how difficult Brexit would prove.

“I think there are plenty of other civil servants,” he told Today. “They don’t have to be absolute advocates of leaving the European Union. They simply have to accept that when push comes to shove they deliver on leaving.”

Rogers has been attacked by Tory sceptics for warning that it may take as long as 10 years for the UK to fully break from the EU. Downing Street insisted at the time that the ambassador had been communicating the views of some European leaders, rather than giving his own assessment. He has also been repeatedly criticised for setting out how other EU leaders view the Brexit process.

He wrote to staff: “I hope that you will continue to be interested in the views of others, even where you disagree with them, and in understanding why others act and think in the way that they do.”

Implying that civil servants or politicians in London were trying to take over the Brexit talks, and that the structure of the UK negotiating team needed “rapid resolution”, he said “multilateral negotiating experience is in short supply in Whitehall, and that is not the case in the [European] commission or in the council”.

He said: “Senior ministers, who will decide on our positions, issue by issue, also need from you detailed, unvarnished – even where this is uncomfortable – and nuanced understanding of the views, interests and incentives of the other 27.”

Alistair Burt, a remain-backing Conservative MP and former foreign office minister, called for a ministerial statement when the Commons resumes next week to explain Rogers’ departure.



Burt said the farewell email amounted to “a very public warning about what is currently occurring on our nation’s behalf as we enter the most important negotiations of our peacetime life”.

Writing on the ConservativeHome website, Burt said: “If such warnings from a public servant who has devoted his working life to his country are dismissed simply as coming from a europhile, who deserves clearing out with the others or similar nonsense, then we will all be the losers.”

Speaking to Today, Fraser said Rogers’ email seemed to show “a slight sense of frustration that the coordination of the whole approach of the government to the negotiations was not as tight as he would like it to be”.

Fraser dismissed the idea that Rogers went into EU talks with a negative attitude: “Anyone who knows Ivan or has worked with him will know absolutely that he was not someone who was ready to take no for an answer. He was a very persistent negotiator. He showed lots of determination. He worked incredibly hard to achieve the government’s objectives.

“What I do agree is that Ivan had a particular style, which he himself acknowledges in his email, which is he liked to give clear, unvarnished advice to ministers. He considered that to be the role of the civil servant.

News of Rogers’ resignation brought an unusually candid reaction from another former top civil servant.

Lord MacPherson, who was permanent secretary at the Treasury from 2005 until last year, said the departure so close to the start of Brexit negotiations amounted to a “wilful and total destruction of EU expertise”.

In a tweet, MacPherson said Rogers’ decision was a huge loss and that he was the latest in a string of EU experts to be frozen out, describing the decision as “amateurish”.

nick macpherson (@nickmacpherson2) Ivan Rogers huge loss. Can't understand wilful&total destruction of EU expertise, with Cunliffe,Ellam&Scholar also out of loop.#amateurism

The Foreign Office played down the implications of the resignation, saying Rogers had been due to leave in November and that he had merely “resigned a few months early”.



“Sir Ivan has taken this decision now to enable a successor to be appointed before the UK invokes article 50 by the end of March,” a spokeswoman said.