LONDON — Jean-Claude Juncker might just be Theresa May’s best electoral asset.
In a textbook example of how May’s Conservatives plan to see off potential crises during the June 8 general election campaign, the prime minister’s team stayed quiet after leaks suggested a dinner with Juncker went “really badly,” waited for Labour to get into trouble, then turned the criticism to their advantage.
Tuesday began with bulletins leading with bombshell EU briefings about May’s supper last week with Juncker, the European Commission president, and Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator.
Even the most ardent Brexiteers held their fire. There would be no “briefing war,” party sources said.
The pause allowed another story — Labour’s shadow home secretary Diane Abbott muddling her figures on a key manifesto pledge about police numbers — to dominate the headlines for the entire working day.
Then at 5 p.m., just in time for the evening news, May popped up in a BBC interview, to steal the headlines and underline her strength in the face of Labour’s travails.
The leaks from her dinner with Juncker, she said, showed negotiations would be “tough,” and who did the public want making Britain’s case? “It’s either going to be me, or Jeremy Corbyn.”
She would be a “bloody difficult woman” for Juncker to deal with, she added, guaranteeing top billing on the night’s news.
“There is a view that the more the Labour party’s key spokespeople — Corbyn, Abbott, [Emily] Thornberry and [John] McDonnell — are on the TV, the more often the Labour party are going to face-plant into a wall,” one well-connected Tory MP said. “Then all we have to do is pop up afterward and say: Do you want this lot, or do you want ‘strong and stable leadership?’”
Strong and stable messaging
May’s attempt to turn negative headlines about Wednesday’s dinner — an event which led to descriptions of her as delusional and badly briefed — to the Tories’ advantage, suggest how wedded the party is to their overall message (repeated ad nauseam) that what you get from May is “strong and stable leadership.”
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Suella Fernandes, a leading Brexiteer and one of the rising stars of the party’s 2015 intake, now seeking re-election, insisted that the take-home message from the EU leaks was that the U.K. needed “an adult in the room” at the negotiations. Her blithe take on the weekend’s events encapsulated the coordinated approach of Tory spokespeople.
“There are always going to be leaks. I don’t really take it very seriously,” she said. “Of course there is disagreement, but Theresa May is very competent and experienced at dealing with complex issues and expressing a position.”
Another MP insisted the leaks were nothing to write home about.
“This is just the kind of chest-beating, the kind of big talk you expect before a negotiation,” the MP said. “You don’t get fazed by it, you don’t get scared by it.”
There is no “iron rod” from Conservative Campaign Headquarters dictating what Tory MPs say in response to such news events, the MP insisted. But all MPs do receive “lines to take” on broader election messages, he said.
Rather than harming May, the Tories now think Juncker may have helped her in the general election.
Trust issues
Nevertheless, the scale of the leak took Downing Street by surprise.
May’s “bloody difficult woman” jibe at Juncker (derived from a comment made about her last summer by Tory veteran Ken Clarke) points to a newly confrontational approach with the European Commission in particular.
“Look, I think what we’ve seen recently is that at times these negotiations are going to be tough,” May told the BBC. “During the Conservative party leadership campaign, I was described by one of my colleagues as ‘a bloody difficult woman.’ And I said at the time, ‘the next person to find that out will be Jean-Claude Juncker.’”
On the substance of the criticism leveled against her by the EU over the weekend, May was a little less robust.
She declined to confirm reports that she had told EU leaders at the dinner that she believed a deal on the rights of EU citizens living in the U.K. and U.K. citizens living in Europe could be reached by June, a timeframe EU officials consider unrealistic.
But the key upshot of the weekend’s events may be a ratcheting up of No. 10’s relationship with Juncker and the Commission. Pressed Tuesday morning on whether May trusted Juncker, her official spokesman declined to give reporters positive assurance, saying: “All I can say is what I have said in the past: We approach the talks in a constructive manner and with a huge amount of goodwill.”
The spokesman also appeared to hint that London prefers dealing with the European Council, despite the fact that Barnier, the EU’s lead negotiator, is an employee of the Commission.
Asked if the U.K. was negotiating with the EU27 as represented by the Council, not with Juncker and the Commission, the spokesman said: “We are negotiating with the European Council, but as has been clear all parties have a role to play in these negotiations.”