

The management consultancy Deloitte was ‘pressured by the government’ to say they were behind the devastating memo on Brexit, leaked yesterday.



Yesterday a memo leaked to the Times and the BBC said the government was in “chaos” over Brexit and was having to recruit around 30,000 civil servants to deal with the complexity of Brexit.

The government denied they were behind the memo and blamed the consultancy Deloitte instead.

The Times today reports today:

Last night Deloitte issued a state-ment saying that the memo had been prepared “without access to No 10 or input from any other government de-partments”. The Times understands, however, that the statement was issued after pressure from the government and amid fears that the firm could be stripped of future contracts. […]

It is understood that Deloitte has a long-standing consultancy contract with the department and the authoris a member of the team. The team deals with leadership across the civil service, and Brexit has been part of the agenda since the referendum.

So much for a government committed to transparency and openness.

The chaos over Brexit at the heart of government is also starting to annoy European ministers, who we will have to start negotiating with.

Here’s another excerpt this morning from Bloomberg:

Calenda [a former Italian envoy to Brussels] told Bloomberg Television that he had “loved” the biography of Winston Churchill written by Johnson, “but on Brexit we are on opposite sides.” Johnson told him during a recent meeting that Italy would grant Britain access to the EU’s single market “because you don’t want to lose prosecco exports.”

“He basically said, ‘I don’t want free movement of people but I want the single market,’” said Calenda. “I said, ‘no way.’ He said, ‘you’ll sell less prosecco.’ I said, ‘OK, you’ll sell less fish and chips, but I’ll sell less prosecco to one country and you’ll sell less to 27 countries.’ Putting things on this level is a bit insulting.”

On Newsnight last night, the Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem said Boris Johnson “is saying things that are intellectually impossible, politically unavailable,” Dijsselbloem said.

WATCH

Boris Johnson is offering the British people Brexit options which aren’t available @J_Dijsselbloem tells #Newsnight https://t.co/wyH3VTnyc3 — BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) November 15, 2016

He also said Brexit would be a “lose-lose situation” for both the UK and EU