‘Enraged’ Picardo ‘lectured’ Prime Minister over Brexit letter, book claims
Chief Minister Fabian Picardo was “enraged” by the UK Government’s failure to include an explicit reference to Gibraltar in its Article 50 letter triggering Brexit last march - and “lectured” Prime Minister Theresa May about her advisors when she called to placate him.
Amid political fallout in the UK over Gibraltar’s exclusion from the letter, Mr Picardo told the Prime Minister that her then chief advisors, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, had blocked his access and prevented him from warning her.
His intervention astonished officials in Downing Street but was also welcomed because the two advisors were seen as confrontational and over-protective of the Prime Minister.
It was the first time that anyone had complained to Mrs May about the Mr Timothy and Ms Hill, both of whom resigned last June following the disastrous Tory general election campaign.
Details of the conversation between the Prime Minister and the Chief Minister are revealed in “Fall Out: A Year of Political Mayhem”, the latest book by Tim Shipman, the political editor of The Sunday Times.
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