If there is one figure that has propelled many in Britain to reject Europe it is the legendary Brussels Eurocrat – the unelected, unaccountable federalist – shaping the EU superstate to do down Britain, remove control over our own affairs, and generally impose the laws and rules of a European superstate on the British people and their democratic institutions.
But it may be exactly one of these bogeymen who will rescue Theresa May from the looming apocalypse of a No Deal crash out from the European Union. The government is putting out endless warnings of what a No Deal can mean – flights grounded, 50 kilometre queues at ports, the City losing all legal rights to do financial business in the EU, British driving licences not valid on the continent, medicines not arriving in time, and meat exports to the continent suspended.
But now there is a saviour in sight. Step forward, the Eurocrat’s Eurocrat, the Secretary General of the European Commission, Martin Selmayr.
Mr Selmayr, a German of course, was Chief of Staff, to Jean-Claude Juncker and provoked a ferocious controversy earlier this year when he was named as the next Commission’s bureaucratic supremo without open competition for the post.
This provoked a massive backlash in anti-Juncker and anti-Selmayr circles in Brussels. The appointment was denounced as secretive, personal, and there was even a debate in the European Parliament to censure Juncker. Many consider that Selmayr will have to give up his job when a new Commission president emerges next summer.
But in the meantime, it is Selmayr who is doing his best to save Mrs May’s Brexit bacon. He told EU27 representatives in Brussels that he is preparing secret plans to bring in emergency legislation that can be adopted in just 5 days to stop a complete shutdown of commerce and travel in the event that there is no Withdrawal Agreement, if Labour votes with the DUP and Tory anti-Europeans in the ERG.
But Selmayr will be concentrating in his own hands legal power that normally has to be approved democratically by the European Parliament, the rest of the Commission and all EU member states. It will mean a suspension of all EU democratic norms and a transfer of power to a powerful Eurocrat who has never been elected.
It may be the only way to stop complete chaos so British anti-Europeans will have to look the other way unless they really want to bring Britain to a complete halt. And the word in Brussels is that if Selmayr does indeed leave his post as No 1 Eurocrat his next job will be as EU Ambassador to post-Brexit Britain.
Denis MacShane is the former UK Minister of Europe who first used the term Brexit in 2012. His latest book Brexit, No Exit. Why (in the End) Britain Won’t Leave Europe is published by IB Tauris.
