LONDON — Theresa May has ordered a Brexit charm offensive at home and abroad, coordinated by a new Whitehall team drawn from David Davis’ Brexit department and Boris Johnson’s Foreign Office.

The new “engagement unit" will exploit the U.K.’s network of European ambassadors in an attempt to directly explain the U.K.’s Brexit strategy to government officials, businesses and other "stakeholders” in EU capitals, while also engaging with key interest groups at home, government officials familiar with the strategy told POLITICO.

It follows a direct “edict” from the prime minister herself for the U.K. to redouble efforts to “get the message out,” one senior U.K. official said.

London has become increasingly sensitive to accusations that Whitehall is underprepared for Brexit. The communications strategy, which hitherto saw the government keep many aspects of its Brexit plan a closely-guarded secret, has allowed the EU side to fill the void and frame the debate, senior officials now believe.

The change in approach is also symptomatic of an opening up of communications under the new team in No. 10 Downing Street following the June 8 election. Prior to the election, in which Prime Minister Theresa May lost her majority, the prime minster's two co-chiefs of staff ran a very tight operation which controlled communication across all government departments. Both were forced to resign in the wake of the election campaign and May's new team has made deliberate efforts to make government more open.

"This is about making the most effective use of specialist knowledge across both departments" — DExEU spokesperson

The strategy will particularly focus on EU capitals, ahead of a crucial European Council summit in October that will decide whether negotiations can progress to the next stage and discussions of the future relationship between the U.K. and the EU.

“As we approach the next stage of negotiations — discussing our future relationship with the EU once we’ve left — we want to ramp up the communications work, campaigns and stakeholder engagement that will enable the government to communicate its messages effectively in EU member states as well as at home," a spokesperson from the Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) said.

“Staff from DExEU and FCO are working together to deliver this. This is about making the most effective use of specialist knowledge across both departments.”

'Special partnership' with EU

Britain’s network of ambassadors in the EU27 capitals, who are coordinated from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) led by Johnson, had been underused in the Brexit process so far, the first official said.

“Ambassadors know who to talk to and how to talk to them, but they have been a relatively untapped resource … They can have more influence than an opinion piece by a minister in a newspaper,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

With the role of the EU member countries in the Brexit negotiations about to become critical when leaders of the EU27 and Theresa May meet for the October European summit, British officials are conscious of the need to reassure May's counterparts that the U.K. wants a good economic outcome for both sides and a close relationship with the EU after Brexit.

May’s Article 50 letter from March called for a “deep and special partnership” with the EU and “a fair settlement of the U.K.'s rights and obligations as a departing member state.”

The new Whitehall unit will ensure ambassadors and their teams are fully briefed on Brexit plans and empowered to reach out to their opposite numbers and other key influencers.

Their task will be made easier after the U.K. publishes up to 12 position papers, expected in the coming weeks, on crucial aspects of its EU strategy — part of what officials are calling a “big push” to firm up and publicize the Brexit plan.

Robin Niblett, director of the London-based foreign policy think tank Chatham House, said that the U.K. had neglected diplomacy in European capitals in recent years, and welcomed the move toward deeper engagement ahead of Brexit.

“During the last big push for ‘Global Britain,’ prior to Brexit, the government raised the number of British diplomats in India, China, the Gulf, while cutting back some of the human capacity in European capitals. Now the government is having to do some re-engineering to bring back that capability to prepare for the pointy end of the Brexit negotiation,” he said.

“But the government has to be clear that we are negotiating with Brussels and that we do have clear ideas on everything from fisheries to farming to air traffic control, and on the whole negotiating position with the EU, right down to granular details.”

Victory for Whitehall

The formation of the new unit is in part a victory for senior DExEU official Alex Ellis, a former ambassador to Brazil and European Commission staffer, who has long argued for greater openness and engagement over Brexit, according to the first official.

Ellis, who previously worked in the office of former European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, became a director general at DExEU in January. His push, supported by others within the Brexit department, for officials to have more contact with external parties such as foreign governments, businesses, and the media fell foul of No. 10’s tight communications management prior to the June general election, the official said.

A third former Whitehall official also said that the ambassador network had been under-used, and unable to feed into the Brexit strategy with political intelligence from EU27 capitals because of the closed-shop nature of Downing Street prior to June’s general election.

May's civil service restructure following the June 2016 EU referendum result — which created DExEU and sidelined Johnson's Foreign Office — was seen as a mistake by many senior officials at the time, the ex-official said.