Ivan Rogers (first right) who is to become the new British envoy to the European Union.
One of Prime Minister David Cameron’s most senior advisors is to become Britain’s new ambassador to the European Union (EU), a role at the centre of efforts to reshape ties with the EU before a possible in/out referendum.
Former finance ministry official Ivan Rogers, who advises Cameron on the EU and global issues, will be handed one of the toughest jobs in diplomacy at a historic moment in Britain’s often tortured relationship with its biggest trading partner. If re-elected in 2015, Cameron has promised to give Britons an EU membership referendum by the end of 2017, raising the prospect that the world’s sixth largest economy could leave an organisation it first joined in 1973.
A senior British diplomatic source said Rogers was “close to Cameron’s thinking”, adding: “It is going to be a very political role for the next three to four years.” The appointment of the Oxford-educated father-of-two was not universally popular. Eurosceptics in Cameron’s Conservative Party, a rebellious faction which has repeatedly challenged the prime minister’s authority in parliament, pointed out that Rogers has worked for two of the biggest EU supporters in British politics.
Rogers was once chief advisor to Ken Clarke, a Conservative cabinet minister who is one of the government’s most vocal EU cheerleaders and was also chief-of-staff to Leon Brittan, a former vice-president of the European Commission.