It’s going to be a tough year for British diplomats in Brussels.
Morale is low, and the ranks of the U.K.’s representation to the EU are increasingly threadbare. Planned new positions have been abolished, vacant positions are proving hard to fill and the two top jobs are now empty.
Prime Minister Theresa May’s government has canceled at least 24 EU-related jobs since the referendum, including nine posts at its Brussels representation, also known as UKREP.
But Brexit campaigners want more scalps. Douglas Carswell, UKIP’s only member of the British parliament, tweeted Wednesday: “I doubt that a single civil servant working at UKREP or the Foreign Office voted for Brexit.”
Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage wants the resignation of Ivan Rogers, the U.K.’s ambassador to the EU, to be the first of many. And former cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith told BBC radio that Rogers had leaked confidential information that embarrassed ministers, suggesting Rogers could no longer be trusted.
The BBC reported in December that Rogers had warned London that Brexit could take as long as 10 years, and some Tories seized on this as proof he is not loyal.
Getting out or getting on
At UKREP, Rogers’ resignation has left staff members “reeling,” according to one British diplomat. “The next appointee, whoever that will be, will have their work cut out with an extra layer of public pressure which won’t make it any easier,” the diplomat said. Another described the situation as “a sinking ship.”
On Wednesday evening, Tim Barrow, a career diplomat, was named as Rogers’ replacement.
But according to a third diplomat, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, it’s not all doom and gloom. “Some are getting out,” the diplomat said. “Others getting on with it.”
In theory, UKREP should be the base camp for Britain’s Brexit negotiators. But diplomats have struggled to even stay in the loop, with May’s government reportedly sidelining senior figures in the civil service.
Rogers wrote in his resignation note Tuesday that “serious multilateral negotiating experience is in short supply in Whitehall, and that is not the case in the Commission or in the Council,” urging former colleagues “to keep on working at intensifying your links with opposite numbers [in the Department for Exiting the EU.]”
Communication lines getting thinner
Other European embassies to the EU can rely on their compatriots inside the EU institutions to share information and act as a sounding board for influencing strategies. For U.K. diplomats that resource is increasingly hard to tap. For more than a decade, the U.K. has struggled to take up its share of positions inside the European Commission. The number of British Commission staff has fallen by around 50 percent since 2005 and is barely one-third the number of French staff, for example.
Previously, U.K. governments addressed that by loaning experts to the Commission to help with specific expertise, planting valuable eyes and ears inside the EU system. But the new British government changed that. In November 2016, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson abruptly ended the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s funding of around 50 British civil servants on loan to the Commission.
Meanwhile, other U.K. government efforts at soft power as they manage the EU exit have been thwarted. Both Malta and Estonia rejected offers from the British to loan officials to help them manage their turns at the EU’s rotating presidency in 2017. Such exchanges were considered standard practice prior to the Brexit referendum.
The task of recruiting staff to UKREP itself is becoming tougher. For senior staff facing off with figures such as the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, the prospect of running negotiations under hard Brexit instructions may seem like a poisoned chalice. “I don’t think anyone in their right mind would take it,” says one former UKREP staffer.
For those recruited to more junior roles, prospects include being surrounded by colleagues with low morale while paying Belgian taxes on lower-paying local contracts, now that the era of cushy diplomatic postings is over.
Current UKREP vacancies have a starting gross salary as low as €3,024 per month, which means less than €2,000 monthly in the pocket, after Belgian income taxes and social security charges have been applied.
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