Thread by @tconnellyRTE

Some key quotes from @MichelBarnier's book The Grand Illusion:

2/ On his meeting with Nigel Farage, who, he says, told him the £350m Vote Leave bus message was a mistake: “Yes, that was a mistake, I had told Boris not to do it”, Barnier reports Farage as saying. "Could you be more cynical?" he asks

3/ On Theresa May: "A very direct woman, convinced of what she is saying, wanting to impose her authority, as she had done by announcing elections, a desire for power, enough to want to negotiate a Brexit where the damage is limited, while she knows it will be a negative event.."

4/ On approaching the Irish question: “I promised myself in these negotiations not to give in to controversy or the attacks from British tabloids, to be careful with language, to stick to the facts, figures, the legal basis, in short not to allow room for emotion or sentiment.."

5/ “But then, in Ireland, where I recall the terrible pages of the book Return to Killybegs by Sorj Chalandon, it is difficult not to be affected by the sensitivity, the emotion of those who express it, the memories which remind me of this tragedy.”

6/ [Sorj Chalandon, a French journalist, wrote the fictionalised account in 2011 of the murder of Denis Donaldson, a Sinn Fein member unmasked as a British agent]

7/ On the ill-fated lunch between Theresa May and Jean-Claude Juncker in Dec 2017, when Arlene Foster said she wdn't support the Joint Report, Theresa May demanded changes "or you won't have a British government to talk to"

8/ Barnier is particular frustrated during his encounters with the DUP who accused him of being “the puppets of Dublin, which they detest, and [that] we would like to create a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK so as to avoid one in the middle of the island.”

9/ Ahead of May's WA, he met Arlene Foster and Diane Dodds, whom he says came with exaggerated and fixed positions...

10/ “Listening to these two women, I had difficulty keeping calm and I wondered if Theresa May will have the courage and will not to give in to their demands… They are opposed to everything, want nothing to do with the concrete proposals we are making,”

11/ Barnier says the talks nearly collapsed during a heated meeting with Dominic Raab, whom he described as having an almost "messianic glow"

12/ This was in August 2018, after he took over from David Davis, who had resigned over the Chequers white paper, as Brexit Secretary. May had proposed the UK wide customs union to avoid a customs border on the Irish Sea. The EU had reservations

13/ Barnier quotes Raab as saying “The question of Ireland must be settled in the context of a larger agreement. That's why we want an overall solution for the UK, across a special customs arrangement and a common rulebook for exports.

14/ Raab added: "If you don’t accept these proposals, then it will be no deal and that will be your responsibility, which will bring up borders. Not our [responsibility].”

15/ Barnier replied: "Theresa May never dared to make this threat; never, because she knew her responsability and that of the UK. She recognised: that it is Brexit which creates the problem in Ireland, nothing else.

16/ “We are searching for solutions together. And Dominic, if this threat is the new line of your govt, then the negotiations can end immediately. And I will prepare myself in the coming days to inform the EP and MS. We will regard the failure as being the fault of the UK.”