Dr. Martin Selmayr: Dr. No?

Professor Dr Martin Selmayr, the Secretary General of the European Commission, is the EU’s most senior civil servant. As far as Britain is concerned, however, he is Dr No — the evil genius behind the comic figure of “President” Jean-Claude Juncker. The Brexiteer MPs Andrea Jenkyns and John Whittingdale may not quite be James Bond (played by Sean Connery) and Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress) landing on the island, but they must have felt they were lucky to get out alive.

The Brexit select committee spent 90 minutes in Dr No’s office. Accounts differ about what exactly was said, but the format of the meeting was revealing. Instead of the MPs questioning Selmayr, it was he who grilled them. This was not an exercise in democracy, with elected representatives holding an appointed official to account. The boot was very firmly on the other foot.

Armed with their voting records in the Commons, Selmayr interrogated them about what concessions, if any, would buy their support for the Withdrawal Agreement. In particular, he wanted to test their attitude to last month’s Juncker-Tusk letter to the Prime Minister (a letter that Selmayr himself almost certainly drafted), offering a legal guarantee that the Irish backstop would be temporary.

According to Stephen Crabb MP, Selmayr was very careful not to offer to change the agreement. “We talked around the idea of the letter being written into some kind of legal protocol. Every time someone asked him if it was something he could do, he said: ‘Let me turn around the question. If we were to do that, would you be guaranteed to vote for the deal?’ That’s where some of the more Brexiteer members of the committee couldn’t say [yes].”

Another MP said that Selmayr pressurised Andrea Jenkyns in particular. Would such a protocol change her mind? “She was unable to say so. When he pressed her, she said ‘maybe 80 per cent of the way’.”

By turning the tables on the British MPs in this way, Selmayr transformed them from legislators holding a civil servant to account into supplicants at the court of an imperial authority. Parliaments in the EU are expected to ratify treaties, not to reject them by thumping majorities. When the MPs failed to give him the answers he wanted, the Secretary-General made only a gnomic but ominous remark: “The answers…were inconclusive. The meeting confirmed that the EU did well to start its no-deal preparations in December 2017.”

Admittedly, some of the Remain MPs present gained the impression that Selmayr was opening the door to a compromise over the backstop. The Labour MP Stephen Kinnock said: “It is definitely reopening the Withdrawal Agreement but only to slip something in and close it again very quickly.” The Tory Richard Graham thought that the Attorney General, Geoffrey Cox, might be persuaded by such a protocol to change his advice: “If he wrote a letter saying that he is now reassured that Britain cannot be held in a customs union against our will, that would change everything.”

But the fact remains that Selmayr would not promise anything without a cast-iron guarantee that the Commons would ratify the Agreement. And neither Theresa May nor anybody else can speak for Parliament. British parliamentary democracy is as much a mystery to EU officials as the British press, another of their bugbears. But behind both Parliament and the press is the British public, which rejects the EU precisely because it is run by unaccountable bureaucrats such as Selmayr. It was the public that voted to leave in 2016 and public opinion is still driving the Brexit process. And it is this that the Eurocrats cannot forgive.

Is it unfair to compare the Secretary-General of the Commission to a James Bond villain? He has just demonstrated yet again why he is such a formidable negotiator. But he and his colleagues have been rejecting any compromise with the UK for so long now that there is very little goodwill left on either side. Selmayr may not be Dr No, but he is certainly Dr Nein.