'Essential reading for anyone anxious to understand the background to the Brexit debate' Tablet With all the political infighting in British politics over Brexit dominating the news cycle, we almost forgot who we were negotiating with. Now, in Blind Man's Brexit, we get to see and hear exactly what was going on in the corridors of power in Brussels, and how the EU comprehensively outmanoeuvred the UK government. When Lode Desmet met Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament's representative on Brexit, about filming a fly-on-the-wall documentary on the negotiations, he could never have imagined the unique access he would be granted and the extraordinary story that he would end up filming. As the cameras rolled, Lode sat in on private conversations with chief negotiator Michel Barnier and saw first hand how Theresa May's government's negotiating positions were knocked back time after time. The results were aired in the BBC documentary series Brexit: Behind Closed Doors. Written with distinguished political commentator Edward Stourton, who also provides a British perspective on events, Blind Man's Brexit goes beyond the documentary to reveal a staggering and unprecedented failure of diplomacy on one side and contrasts the very clearly defined aims and goals of the EU side. Many books have attempted to tell the story of what happened, but this one has completely unfiltered access to events as viewed by the EU, and shows exactly why, how and where the Brexit negotiations went so spectacularly wrong, resulting in our departure from the EU being delayed beyond 29 March 2019 as the UK was left in limbo and its political system in disarray.

This book, based on recently declassified documents in Britain and the USA, is the first detailed account of Britain's East of Suez decision, which was taken by the Harold Wilson Government in 1967-68. Contrary to received opinion, the author argues that the decision was not taken hastily as a result of the November 1967 devaluation. Nor is there any hard evidence to support the notion that there existed a 'Pound-Defence' deal with the USA. Despite Washington's pressure to maintain Britain's East of Suez role, the decision was taken by the Labour Government on the basis of a long-term effort to re-examine Britain's world role since 1959, and it marked the end of an era for postwar Britain.