BRUSSELS (AP) – Diplomatic language has gone out of the window in the standoff over Britain’s departure from the European Union, with a UK government delegate calling one top EU official a “stupid boy.”
Martin Callanan, Minister of State at the Department for Exiting the European Union of the United Kingdom, said ahead of an EU meeting that EU Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans has spread “childish insults” about the British negotiating stance which has failed to bring a breakthrough in over two years of talks.
Timmermans says in a BBC documentary to be aired late Thursday that U.K. negotiators had been “running around like idiots.”
Callanan, quoting a famous riposte from the British sitcom “Dad’s Army,” said Timmermans was a “stupid boy.”