Michael Ellam: The EU Sherpa Resetting The UK-EU Relationship
Michael Ellam (Illustration: Tracy Worrall)
8 min read
Having served under Gordon Brown and George Osborne, Michael Ellam is now Keir Starmer’s ‘EU sherpa’, tasked with resetting the UK’s relationship with the EU. As the UK-EU summit approaches, Sophie Church explores why Ellam has been picked for the job. Illustration by Tracy Worrall
In February, Keir Starmer was joined in the Oval Office by his closest colleagues – Foreign Secretary David Lammy, chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, and UK national security adviser Jonathan Powell – to guide President Donald Trump into continued support of Ukraine.
In the background sat Starmer’s ‘EU sherpa’, Michael Ellam. As the White House turns its back on Europe, it’s Ellam who has perhaps the most crucial job of all: rebuilding British bridges with the EU.
Appointed in January as second permanent secretary, European Union and international Economic Affairs, Ellam represents the PM and EU relations minister Nick Thomas-Symonds in negotiations with the EU. He will also represent the government at G20 and G7 summits.
Ellam follows in the footsteps of Sir Tom Scholar, Sir Ivan Rogers and Sir Jon Cunliffe – EU sherpas leading European relations in the Cabinet Office before the EU referendum.
During Brexit, the function of EU sherpa was shuffled from the Department for Exiting the European Union, to the Europe Unit, and then to the Foreign Office. It has now been brought back into the Cabinet Office, with Ellam leading a team of 100 helping to bring the UK closer to Europe. He is reportedly earning £150,000 to do so.
Friends say Ellam’s tendency to avoid the spotlight has been his strength. But the civil servant is now front-and-centre in resetting the UK-EU relationship. Earlier this month, for example, Ellam met Heiko Thoms, Germany’s state secretary at the Federal Ministry of Finance, in Berlin to discuss defence spending.
Ellam’s first major test will be the upcoming UK-EU summit, the first of its kind since Brexit. Taking place in London on the 19th of this month, the government hopes to find agreement on a youth mobility scheme, food and agricultural standards and a deal on carbon emissions.
President of the European commission Ursula von der Leyen, European council president António Costa and EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy Kaja Kallas are all invited.
Dr Steffen Meyer, one of Olaf Scholz’s closest advisers, worked with Ellam when employed at Germany’s Ministry of Finance and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Ellam worked in the Treasury at the time.
While he does not comment on current discussions with Ellam, he says Starmer’s new hire was always “interested in finding compromises” back then.
“I very often had to negotiate on the level one or two steps above me, because my bosses would come later on,” he says. “He would always take me seriously, even if he was in a higher position.”
“I think in those negotiations, what was always helpful was he would try and be interested in finding solutions,” he adds.
Ellam’s ability to listen stands in stark contrast to European dealings with the UK during Brexit, says Gerassimos Thomas, director general of taxation and the customs union at the European commission, who knew Ellam when he was working at the Treasury.
“He listens. He tries to be fair and realistic. But also, he’s a very good negotiator who can stand firm,” he says. “What has been important and makes a difference with this government is that it is paying enough time to listen and understand the other side.”
Ellam, 56, grew up in London, and attended a comprehensive school Forest Hill. He went on to study economics at Cambridge, then at the London School of Economics (LSE). After university, Ellam worked as an economist for LSE in Moscow, and for Credit Suisse in London.
In 1993, he joined the Treasury as an economist. A year later, he was made then-chancellor Kenneth Clarke’s private secretary, before going to Beijing to work in the British Embassy.
When he returned to the UK, Ellam spent nine years working in various roles in the Treasury. In 2007, he was made Gordon Brown’s director of communications and official spokesman.
Stewart Wood, now a Labour peer, met Ellam while working as a special adviser to Brown. A veteran of late nights in Brussels “trying to hatch a deal without selling Britain down the river”, Lord Wood says: “If anyone can navigate the narrow course between all the competing demands and come up with a package that has a defensible combination of wins and compromises, it’s Mike.”
For crossbench peer Lord Macpherson, who lamented Cunliffe, Scholar and Rogers’ departure from government as a “destruction of EU expertise” in 2017, Ellam’s recruitment is “a real coup” for the PM. “I know of nobody more skilled in the arcane art of international economic diplomacy than Michael,” he says.
“He’s very quiet in his manner, and incredibly assiduous and focused,” Wood says. “He never says anything that he hasn’t thought about and reflected on for a lot of time. If you’re in a meeting with Michael, he will be quiet and listen, and then he’ll say one or two things, and you think: ‘Yes, that sounds right. That’s got to be the way we do it.’”
It was Ellam who gifted Brown “his best moment as prime minister”, according to Wood. In 2009, Brown claimed the end of the recession was in sight while hosting a G20 summit in London’s ExCel Centre, announcing an additional £748bn would be injected into the world economy.
“This is the day that the world came together to fight back against the global recession,” Brown declared, after days of leading international efforts to solve the crisis.
Just before the declaration – with the gravity of the moment weighing on Brown – Ellam, pacing the room, magicked up the line for the PM that made all the difference. “Gordon relaxed and the rest of it wrote itself,” says Wood.
While the most fleeting of friendships in Westminster can lead to loose lips, long-standing friends of Ellam know him to be unwaveringly discreet.
“Though we’re very good friends, even though I’m Labour and know Rachel Reeves very well and Keir [Starmer], he’s very professional. He won’t gossip out of turn,” says Wood. “When the civil service works really well, it works in the way that Mike works.”
While Brown’s special adviser Damian McBride was “a story machine about his own conduct”, Wood says Ellam is quite the opposite: “He’s not flamboyant.”
Still, the parliamentary lobby knew Ellam as the ‘Sultan of Spin’ – handling press briefings with immense authority yet a tight handle on what information was shared.
“I don’t think we ever caught him out,” says Phil Webster, long-standing former political editor of The Times. “He knew that the way to keep the lobby relatively happy was to give them as much information as he could, within the limit that he set himself.”
In 2009, Ellam returned once more to the Treasury as director general of international finance. When the Conservatives brought an end to Labour’s reign, Ellam continued in the Treasury under David Cameron and George Osborne.
“He is the very best of the British civil service: ferociously bright, creative about trying to find solutions to problems and very modest in his approach,” Osborne tells The House. “But I shouldn’t fool you, behind the modesty, there is a brain operating at 120 per cent on trying to fix things for Britain.”
Ellam accompanied Osborne on key economic trips during this time. In the early days of the Cameron government, the pair travelled to the IMF in Washington, and to G20 meetings in Korea and Russia. They also worked closely on the Eurozone crisis.
A Treasury man primarily, Ellam’s foreign and economic experience leaves the UK able to craft strong economic policy under ever-changing geopolitical headwinds, says the former chancellor.
“Michael as an ex-Treasury civil servant brings the Treasury experience for the foreign policy brief,” he says. “It’s somewhat artificial to think there’s economics, and then there’s national security, because we’ve learned in the last few months they are not so. Michael has got all the experience as well as the brain power to try and pick a way through.”
Leaving the Civil Service in 2013, Ellam spent 11 years working at HSBC, rising to chairman of public sector banking. “Michael is highly detail- focused and in my experience was able to quickly digest complex matters and formulate appropriate strategies,” a former HSBC colleague says.
But Ellam ensured to maintain his network of contacts from public life. He also kept one eye on the Civil Service, waiting for the right moment to return.
“There’s a duty calling feeling to Michael – that he’s been asked to go back to do something that he knows inside out and believes in,” says Webster. “He’s probably a very good man for Starmer to have by his side.”
Ellam’s role in bringing the EU and UK closer together after the acrimony of the Brexit years has now thrust him into the spotlight. But when asked for more on his personal life and background, he politely declines: “As a civil servant, I am not in the habit of promoting my own personal profile.”
His friends respect Ellam’s instinct for privacy, revealing that he supports West Ham, has two children and lives in South London – but nothing more.
“Michael is a civil servant of the old school; a consummate professional who has got to where he is by avoiding any media profile and consistently delivering for the government of the day,” says Macpherson.
Ellam is now one of several heavyweights from the New Labour era Starmer has brought back into government – joining Powell and Peter Mandelson in the PM’s top team.
If the UK-EU summit is deemed a success, Ellam will have proven to be the canniest hire among them.
