Ivan Rogers

Why organisations work with Ivan Rogers

• He was in the room. As UK Ambassador to the EU from 2013 to 2017 and Cameron’s Chief EU Adviser before that, he led the UK side of the pre-referendum renegotiation and the opening phase of Brexit.
• He has worked every side of the Brussels-London axis: HM Treasury, Chef de Cabinet inside the European Commission, Principal Private Secretary to Tony Blair, and senior public sector roles at Citigroup and Barclays Capital.
• His analysis has shaped the serious public record on Brexit, including the book 9 Lessons in Brexit and set-piece lectures at UCL, Cambridge and Glasgow that are now standard reading for political economists.
• He briefs on what actually happens in negotiations, not on slogans. Boards leave with a clearer view of timelines, trade-offs and the realistic range of outcomes on regulation, trade and political alignment.
• KCMG in the 2016 Honours for services to British, European and International Policy, and a seat on the Council of the European Council on Foreign Relations, give his reading of the field independent credibility.

Biography highlights

• UK Permanent Representative to the European Union, 2013 to 2017.
• Prime Minister’s Adviser on Europe and Global Issues, and UK Sherpa to the G8 and G20, 2011 to 2013.
• Principal Private Secretary to Prime Minister Tony Blair, 2003 to 2006.
• Chef de Cabinet to European Commission Vice-President Sir Leon Brittan; Director of European Strategy and Policy at HM Treasury.
• Head of UK Public Sector Group, Citigroup; Head of Public Sector Industry Group UK and Ireland, Barclays Capital.
• Author of 9 Lessons in Brexit (Short Books, 2019); KCMG, 2016; Council member, European Council on Foreign Relations.

Biography

Few people alive have seen the UK-EU relationship from as many vantage points. Ivan Rogers has served inside HM Treasury, inside the European Commission as Chef de Cabinet to Sir Leon Brittan, inside Number 10 as Principal Private Secretary to Tony Blair, and in Brussels as Britain’s Permanent Representative to the EU from 2013 until his resignation in January 2017.

That sequence matters for a reason. Most commentary on Europe is written by people who have read the treaties. Rogers drafted the cables. He ran the UK side of Cameron’s pre-referendum renegotiation, prepared three Prime Ministers for summits as the UK’s G8 and G20 Sherpa, and was the senior British official in the first phase of the Article 50 machinery before he stepped down.

Since leaving government he has become one of the most cited independent voices on Brexit and UK-EU relations. His book 9 Lessons in Brexit, set-piece lectures at UCL, Cambridge, Glasgow and the Institute of International and European Affairs, and podcast work with the European Council on Foreign Relations are built on the same discipline: strip out the politics, map the institutional machinery, tell the reader what is actually going to happen.

For boards, that means usable judgement on trade terms, regulatory divergence, the Northern Ireland settlement, the Labour government’s posture toward Brussels, and the wider geopolitical setting in which all of this now sits. He was knighted KCMG in 2016 for services to British, European and International Policy.

Key speaking topics

• UK-EU relations and the post-Brexit settlement
• Geopolitical and political risk for boards
• European regulation, trade and market access
• Government-business interface and Whitehall decision-making
• Negotiation inside complex multilateral institutions
• Scenario planning for UK and European political risk

Ideal for

• Board and executive audiences in regulated industries exposed to UK-EU divergence, especially financial services, energy, pharma and manufacturing.
• Strategy, public affairs and government relations leaders calibrating political risk over a three to ten year horizon.
• Investors, law firms and advisory houses whose clients need a senior, independent read on UK and European policy direction.

Audience outcomes

• A sharper read on where UK-EU relations are actually heading, stripped of political signalling.
• A practical sense of how Brussels, Whitehall and Number 10 make decisions under pressure, and where the leverage sits.
• A clearer view of the regulatory and trade fault lines that matter most to the audience’s sector.
• Questions answered by someone who has sat at the table with Commission Presidents, Prime Ministers and Chancellors.