Meet the Real Force Behind the Brexit Talks
The public face of negotiations might be David Davis and Michel Barnier, but this pair is making the process work.
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In every negotiation the most important work is done by those in the shadows. Brexit has brought together a secretive English civil servant and a Shakespeare-loving German trade expert as the odd couple working to pull off the impossible.
Olly Robbins and Sabine Weyand sit across each other in round after round of often tedious, technical talks. They come from rival camps—he represents the U.K. trying to get out of the European Union, she is the Brussels insider with little interest in making the divorce easy.