Guy Verhofstadt, the European parliament’s chief Brexit negotiator, has become the latest in a line of senior EU figures to point out apparent contradictions in British ministers’ recent policy statements.

After the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, a leading light of the leave campaign, said on Tuesday that Britain would be one of the strongest supporters of Turkey’s bid to join the bloc, Verhofstadt expressed his disbelief.



“So Boris Johnson wants to help Turkey join the EU – after he just campaigned for the UK to leave the EU on the basis that Turkey would be joining the EU in the near future,” the former Belgian prime minister wrote on Facebook.

He also took issue with the defence secretary Michael Fallon’s remarks that as long as the UK remained a member of the EU, it would block any attempt to form a common military force.

“The UK defence minister says the UK government will block EU efforts to enhance its security capabilities, even though the UK is leaving the EU – yet they say they want an enhanced security relationship with the EU after Brexit,” he observed.

His final target was the trade secretary, Liam Fox, who he said had “indicated the UK will leave the EU’s customs union because he thinks other markets are more important – while his prime minister tells us the EU27 ‘will sign’ an ambitious trade deal with the UK”.

Politics, Verhofstadt concluded wryly, “never fails to surprise me”.

His outburst follows pointed remarks last week by the French and German finance ministers, Michel Sapin and Wolfgang Schäuble, after Johnson said claims of an “automatic link” between single market access and freedom of movement were “complete baloney”.

The pair made could not have been much clearer about their disdain for Johnson, exchanging a weary glance because, as Schäuble said, “we are both accustomed to having a high degree of respect for foreign ministers”.

The German minister subsequently offered to send Johnson a copy of the Lisbon treaty so he could “read about the fact that there’s a certain connection between the single market and the four freedoms. At a pinch, I can talk about it in English.”

Neither, however, was quite as outspoken as the European commissioner for telecoms and IT, Günther Oettinger, who remarked at a meeting of European telecommunications network operators on Tuesday that Britain’s decision to leave the EU was the result of a “shit campaign” by David Cameron. “I’m sorry, that’s life and shit happens,” Oettinger said.