EU offered to delay Brexit for five years during secret talks, documentary reveals

The EU secretly offered to put Brexit “on ice” for five years in order to come up with a new deal for Europe, Theresa May’s de facto deputy has revealed.

David Lidington, the Cabinet Office minister, disclosed that powerful EU official Martin Selmayr had made the offer during a private lunch in the summer of 2018.

The claims will infuriate Brexiteers, who suspect senior officials such as Mr Selmayr – who was the right-hand man to EU Commission boss Jean-Claude Juncker – of trying to thwart the UK’s decision to quit the bloc.

It comes as the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier warned that the UK would have to “face the consequence” of a no-deal Brexit, and claimed that Ms May never suggested she would opt for a disorderly exit during the negotiations.

Mr Lidington told BBC Panorama: “Martin [Selmayr] sort of said ‘look, why don’t we have a deal whereby we just put all this on ice for five years ... Let’s see how things go, let’s get the UK involved with France and Germany, let’s see how the dust settles and let’s talk about whether we can come to a new deal for Europe’”.

When asked if he was tempted to explore the offer further, Mr Lidington said: “I said, ‘look we’ve had a referendum.

“Practically all of us in parliament said we were going to accept the result of that referendum whether it went our way or not ... and that matters in British democratic politics and I don’t think there can be going back on that”.

In an explosive documentary, filmed before the Tory leadership contest was underway, Mr Selmayr also said he was ”very certain” the UK is not prepared for a no-deal Brexit.

“We have followed the British debate and the British preparations very, very closely and we have seen what has been prepared on our side of the border for a hard Brexit – we don’t see the same level of preparation on the other side of the border,” he said.

“You would have to establish a lot of authorities in the United Kingdom that you don’t have at this moment in time so I think the European Union have been very well prepared for that – we could live with a hard Brexit.

“We don’t think the same level of preparation is there on the UK side.”

Mr Barnier, who has led the negotiations for Brussels, claimed Ms May and her team had never mentioned or threatened a no-deal Brexit during the lengthy talks.

Asked if it was ever mentioned, he said: “No, no, I never listened to such a sentence. Never.”

Mr Barnier said he believed the UK knew the EU would not respond to threats of a no deal.

“I think that the UK side, which is well-informed and competent and knows the way we work on the EU side, knew from the very beginning that we’ve never been impressed by such a threat. It’s not useful to use it.”

He added: “We have put in the document [the withdrawal agreement] with the UK – not against the UK, with the UK – the legal answers to each and every point of uncertainty created by Brexit. That is the point.”