Had he gone native?

[Itisnoteasybeingdifferent]

It is a recognised phenomena, taking on board the attitudes and ideology of the host country rather than representing your own government to your host.

Brussels native must be so rewarding in terms of financial security, lifestyle etc you have to admire Farage for continuing to fight it no matter what.

You mean he had started eating frites with Mayonnaise and drinking Stella instead of chips fried in dripping and warm beer?

I think you will find that it is a "recognised phenomenon" throughout history that British officials and businessmen who gained a cultural and political understanding of their host country were and are more effective in representing the country's interests. We are going to need a lot more people who understand the cultures of China, India etc if we are going to negotiate trade deals and do business with them? Quite happy to admit to going native in the country I lived in, and studying its culture, in order to be more effective in doing business there, trying to negotiate in an environment that you do not fully understand is frustrating. Talking loudly and slowly at those you are negotiating with doesn't work very well. It antagonises and means you do not recognise opportunities for mutual benefit. iveybusinessjournal.com/publication/negotiating-the-top-ten-ways-that-culture-can-affect-your-negotiation/

It is also a "recognised phenomenon" that organisations that have a Yesman culture are not as effective as ones where expertise and news is shared and strategies arrived at to deal with the challenges they present. An organisation that ignores bad news is an organisation that is vulnerable. www.the1thing.com/blog/small-business-advice/why-a-company-full-of-yes-men-leads-you-nowhere/

That is why the diplomatic service builds up these skills in it's experienced representatives.....

Shame he failed to negotiate any reasonable concessions with all that experience and expertise he sounds like an autocratic Sir Humphrey who has significantly fucked up his actual job whilst trousering s very nice pack packet and Brussels culture is not mind expanding its elitism big corporation worshipping unelected bureaucracy

Which is why the question is important.

Understanding the local culture is not the same as going native. The former is about being effective. The latter is about becoming part of the local establishment and changing loyalties to suit the hosts instead of your employer.

I noted last night that he lead the negotiations with Cameron where Dave came back with next to nowt.

Yeah. Course he has. Only possible explanation. Turned into a bally foreigner, by gad.

Not a foreigner the EU is not a country it's supposed to be a trading block by turning itself into a wannabe Superstate (and damn near succeeding Thankyou Nigel ) with its own culture we are fully entitled to say no thankyou. Nothing to do with bally foreigners and you reduce your arguments by pulling the racist card

Or maybe he negotiated the best deal he could on the basis of the power he could leverage, and actually he did not come back with nowt, they negotiated a package that included some significant concessions from the EU.

If you ignore the Daily Mail meaningless crap about "elites " and the "establishment" that tries to exploit inverted snobbery / the anti EU feeling and xenophobia they have nurtured to undermine the people who have worked hard to develop the skills we need in those who represent us / operate the judiciary, government etc. then what emerges is a skilled diplomat who had built up an unrivalled network and had developed in himself and his team an appreciation of the complexity of our relations with the EU. I do hope his team continue to as he put It “ you will continue to challenge ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking and that you will never be afraid to speak the truth to those in power. I hope that you will support each other in those difficult moments where you have to deliver messages that are disagreeable to those who need to hear them.” That is what we need to get the best deal.

Sounds like patronising fuckwittery to me I hope he and his team are replaced with hardline Brexiteers who say settle in two years or we leave with no trade deal

There you go with the Daily Mailitus, complexity equals fuckwittery.

This

"The point is to have someone who will tell you frankly what the problems are, who will point out to you the elephant traps, who will say these are the things that could go wrong. Then you make your decision as a politician, and the civil servant will then implement it. He will not argue back at that stage, he will implement them.

But if you are not prepared to have the argument, if you are not prepared to have someone who will tell you what the problems are, you are going to end up in a disaster. And that’s what’s going to happen with these negotiations if they really go for a patsy. You won’t know what’s going to happen, you will live in a miasma, you being the prime minister, the ministers. If they do not have civil servants telling them honestly what the other Europeans think, not telling them honestly what is possible to negotiate, they’ll live in this fantasy land of what’s possible, they’ll live in a Daily Mail world of what could be achieved. And they will fail.

You want to leave with no trade deal? What the hell? Do you actually want our economy to tank completely?

you will continue to challenge ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking and that you will never be afraid to speak the truth to those in power

And what is the truth?

That the EU has become hidebound with bureaucracy and process and it ignores very real national sense of identity and that constant attempts to integrate everyone together without proper democratic representation is beginning to upset people? That unrestricted migration is putting significant pressures on many communities by way of downward pressure on wages whilst increasing demands for services. That when significant numbers of immigrants arrive in a place there is likely to be social tension. That the EU does not have an effective solution for the border situation. That free movement of people is not matched with intranational sharing of police data which leads to significant terrorist issues. That to date the finances have never really been audited.

There are many unpalatable truths that needed to be told.,

On the subject of immigration depressing wages you might like to go visit the Brexit pub where for once they had a good evidenced debate about it.

Few people were wholeheartedly committed to the EU as an institution, it was far from perfect. However to ignore all the benefits, and sources of competitive advantage, it gave us in the global economy is to risk huge economic damage. I have yet to hear anyone who supports Brexit reassure me about exactly what we are going to trade when we lose the competitive advantage we derive from the EU for the financial services, science and technology and academic sectors of our economy. Those are the sectors that are in trading surplus, both with the EU and the rest of the globe, yet they are the sectors most vulnerable to damage as a result of the negotiations. All very well to talk about trade deals and trading globally but to trade globally you have to have something that people want to buy at a price they are willing to pay. At the moment that arises from our financial services industry and it's passport that enables it to be the access point for Europe, it arises from our Science and Tech which EU networks and our academic excellence in part a result of FOM have enabled to punch well above their weight even though we commit half the percentage of GDP that other G8 countries do (and that is still the case in spite of the extra funding the government has promised ) .

If leave means leave and we jump off Infinites cliff please enlighten me as to exactly what stuff we are going to sell to the rest of the world that someone wants to but and is not already selling for less ? China, India etc are very clear that Brexit is their opportunity.

And the answer is not unicorns, or an empire that is just desperate still to be exploited.....

He couldn't possibly just "have a different opinion based on experience ". It has to be some kind of psychological problem. Nice.

He is not mad. He is not deluded. He is pragmatic. The Tories and leavers are NOT going to get what they want from this as it's a case of having your cake and eating it and getting a refund for what you paid for it. This will not happen. I wouldn't want that job either. Seeing as so many on the leave side will not listen 'we don't need experts'!

As someone who supports sovereignty, what I want is for this country to govern itself and make its own laws and not be beholden to an unelected and unaccountable group of self serving administrators and pressure groups.

We gave the world parliamentary democracy and the principle that government is bound by laws it has previously passed. We pretty much drafted the European convention on human rights..We have also pretty much invented everything that the modern world uses from steam power onwards to the internet. We do have an incredible ability to do things.. That is not to say we can rest on our laurels.. Indeed there is a lot of work ahead.

In the end suspect Sir Ivan was telling the UK what the EU would allow instead of the other way round.

Op - do you support the monarchy the House of Lords. How do you feel about the Supreme Court.
Just asking because sovereign decision making is your big thing.

That and unelected elites making decisions about our lives.

ah, is this the chap moaning that Teresa May hasn't confided in him? Yes Sir Ivan. That's because you aren't trustworthy. You only confide in people who will keep your secrets.

ah, is this the chap moaning that Teresa May hasn't confided in him? Yes Sir Ivan. That's because you aren't trustworthy. You only confide in people who will keep your secrets.

Not clear he leaked. Could've been anyone who got his letter.

You only confide in people who will keep your secrets.

Kind of foolish to not tell your head negotiator what he is negotiating for?

I don't think he'd gone native, I think he was honest about the difficulties that lie ahead. I know lots of civil servants think the same.

The problem is that like the leavers on here, the brexit politicians don't want to hear about difficulties they want to hear that they were right and it will all be easy.

Oh and we didn't invent the internet. The Americans did and Tim Berners Lee developed the world wide web at CERN so claiming "we did it" is bollocks, as with much of the rest of your post.

I used to work in the UK Representation (basically our embassy to the EU) under a former ambassador. It's very clear that the job of the UKRep is to get the best deal for the UK and to understand the negotiating position of the other member states to assist with our negotiations. He hasn't gone native - he just knows what we can and cannot achieve and his job is to inform the UK govt. He will be committed to Brexit, albeit perhaps only on a professional level, because that is the will of the people and his job is to pursue that goal.

Bloody depressing to have lost the most knowledgable person in this whole mess and that he's struggled to get a hearing.