Dutch MEP tells the UK: It’s about time you make up your minds!

Dutch MEP Sophie int Veld exasperated by Channel 4 News questioning. Photograph: Channel 4. - Credit: Archant

An exasperated Dutch MEP has said the problems surrounding Brexit are entirely the problem of the UK because it ‘does not know what it wants’.

Sophie in’t Veld, one of the leaders of the liberal grouping in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, said that Brexiteers and certain parts of the media had tried to ‘shift the blame on to the EU’ through the matter of the backstop.

Speaking on Channel 4 News, the MEP explained: ‘This whole idea that there is some sort of devious plan behind this, that the EU would want to keep the UK locked into the EU, is nonsense. The EU is not even capable of this conspiracy.

‘Our job is not to satisfy the Tory Brexiteers, it is the job of British politicians to find consensus, take responsibility of their nation, and it is our job to negotiate on behalf of the European Union and the citizens of the EU 27.

‘We are not going to renegotiate neither the EU nor the Good Friday Agreement – this was all known from the start. We’ve been talking about this for two and a half years.

‘It’s about time the British politicians make up their minds!’

The pro-European MEP rolled her eyes as news anchor asked if Article 50 should be extended and for how long.

‘[I’m] sad to see how the influence that the British used to have in the European Union has faded over the last two and a half years because politicians do not seem able to settle on anything.

‘I’ve just seen squabbling over the last two and a half years, and the proud strong nation that the UK was in the EU has gone.

‘An extension in order to achieve what exactly that was not achieved in two and a half years?’