Brexit Power Matrix: National leaders and lawyers dominate

Many people are important to one side of the Brexit negotiation, but only a few are important and visible to both sides.

In this power matrix POLITICO maps out both the high and low-profile players on both sides of the Channel, so that you can see their relative importance to each of the teams.

The unprecedented negotiation will be a strange ebb and flow of politicians, civil servants, diplomats and lawyers. Each party — or in the case of the EU27, set of parties — will also attempt to use media outlets to advance their cause. The probability of leaks is high. The probability of some kind of breakdown in public communications or a breakdown of the negotiations themselves is nearly as high.

Here are the people who will have to steer through the obstacles, and manage crises whenever they occur.

The matrix illustrates that Brussels will be the center of gravity of negotiations, but that national figureheads rather than EU officials will be the core of that center.

It will surprise no one that Theresa May and Angela Merkel are chiefs among the national leaders. The role of the French president will depend on whether Emmanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen, or François Fillon prevails in the spring presidential election.

What may surprise is the number of unknown lawyers holding sway, particularly those from big. Western EU countries. That trend is an indication that legal wrinkles are likely to populate the full two years of negotiations, including possible court challenges in the German constitutional court, and running right through to the veto the European Parliament has over the deal.

There are several new appointments to the U.K. Permanent Representation to the EU, including Ambassador Tim Barrow, his deputy Katrina Williams and Simon Case, the new director general for the U.K.-EU partnership, that Brexit watchers need to watch.

In Whitehall, officials such as Olly Robbins, chief civil servant in the Brexit department, Theresa May’s co-chief of staff Fiona Hill, and Jeremy Heywood, the U.K.’s most senior civil servant, will matter more than most ministers, even those with Brexit responsibilities such as Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Trade Secretary Liam Fox, or even Home Secretary Amber Rudd, who manages the hot-button issue of migration.

British media are outliers: Top of the tree in London, but insignificant to a Brussels bubble tired of tabloid scaremongering.

Wildcards include President Donald Trump and his chief strategist Steve Bannon, who are capable of disruption, and not trusted by the EU27 to watch from the sidelines, and the governments of Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Download the Brexit Power Matrix in high resolution here.