{"id":330131,"date":"2025-08-09T08:50:23","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T08:50:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/330131\/"},"modified":"2025-08-09T08:50:23","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T08:50:23","slug":"john-downing-why-mr-brexit-michel-barnier-is-making-a-political-comeback-at-age-74","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/330131\/","title":{"rendered":"John Downing: Why \u2018Mr Brexit\u2019 Michel Barnier is making a political comeback at age 74"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Former French prime minister announced a run for parliament in by-election \u2013 and may be eyeballing presidency<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Michel Barnier was the EU's Brexit negotiator. Photo: Reuters\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/57b141c9-5d51-480c-b5a3-28b25c606311.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Michel Barnier was the EU&#8217;s Brexit negotiator. Photo: Reuters<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Michel Barnier spent a gloomy Christmas Eve in his flat in Brussels writing his summary of the final EU-UK divorce deal, which he presented to an extraordinary meeting of the 27 member-state ambassadors at 11am that Christmas morning in 2020.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">It was some days later before he could travel for a belated seasonal celebration with his family in France.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former French prime minister announced a run for parliament in by-election \u2013 and may be eyeballing presidency Michel&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,34,2000,299,5187,1699,36,4884,27306,44,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-330131","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-emmanuel-macron","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-european","14":"tag-european-union","15":"tag-france","16":"tag-great-britain","17":"tag-john-downing","18":"tag-marine-le-pen","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114997954112625002","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}