When Theresa May issued her New Year message she spoke of unity, a proud history and a bright future.
Her hope was clearly that the divisions which have been writ large by the Brexit vote of last year could be healed.
“When I sit around the negotiating table in Europe this year, it will be with ... the knowledge that I am there to get the right deal” she said.
Well, that table will have one less occupant after the UK Ambassador to the EU, Sir Ivan Rogers, decided that he does not intend to take a seat next to the British Prime Minister, and is stepping down from his post.
His resignation came as a surprise to many, including Downing Street.
Rogers had been due to retire in November and recent months even brought speculation that he might stay beyond that date in order to guide the Brexit negotiations through EU waters which he knows so well. But that was not to be.
The revelation by the Financial Times that he would be standing down brought a chance for both sides in the Brexit debate to say that this proves their point.
For those on the Remain side it was proof of a chaotic and disorganised approach to Brexit by the UK government.
The loss of Rogers at the EU negotiating table, was, according to former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, a ‘body blow’ to Brexit plans.
Calling him ‘objective and rigorous’ Mr Clegg said that any suggestion that Rogers had been hounded out by ‘hostile Brexiteers’ would be a spectacular own goal.
Downing Street said that Rogers was simply moving on to allow his successor time to get settled ahead of Brexit negotiations. But if that was an attempt to stop the speculation about the departure, it did little to convince anyone that this was simply some New Year re-organisation.
For a start, had that been the plan why did it not happen sooner? March looms ever closer, and if Ms May wanted to allow a successor some lead-in time it would surely be a move which had happened before now.
For the pro-Brexit side though, the departure was the best of New Year’s news, with former UKIP leader Nigel Farage saying he hoped it would be the first of many.
Sir Ivan, he said, was “part of the establishment which ... hadn’t accepted the referendum result and are hoping it will ... never happen”.
He bemoaned a Foreign Office stuffed with similar thoughts and suggested that the field was now open to appoint someone with the positivity and optimism needed to make sure Brexit was the success which voters want to see.
Reaction to the departure also suggests the possibility of further civil service discontent ahead.
The Treasury’s former top civil servant Lord Macpherson took to Twitter to say the departure of the EU Ambassador marked the ‘wilful and total destruction’ of EU expertise in Whitehall.
All expertise will be crucial in the months ahead as the UK enters what Brexit Minister David Davis has called the most complicated negotiations ever.
By the time those negotiations begin, the hope is that the arguments will only be between those on opposite sides of the table, not also amongst the UK delegation. Only time will tell.
