David Lidington, front left, a former minister of state at the Cabinet Office, sits in front of then-prime minister Theresa May. Credit: Jessica Taylor/CC BY 3.0/Wikimedia Commons
Brexiteers have long accused civil servants of hampering the UK’s exit from the EU. But new interviews with leading Tory ministers and advisers paint a very different picture – one in which, despite the best efforts of officials, Tory leaders’ miscalculations and in-fighting stymie progress. Adam Branson reports
Ever since 2016, Brexit-supporting politicians and newspapers have accused civil servants of trying to slow or block the implementation of Brexit. But in a recent interview, a key member of former prime minister Theresa May’s cabinet says the real problem lay elsewhere: in Tory MPs’ inability to agree between themselves on the kind of Brexit they wanted to deliver.