The Brexit meetings between 2017 and 2019 were so continuous and so long that then Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker smoked so much during them that then UK Prime Minister Theresa May lost her voice, a new report reveals. Brexit book by veteran political journalist.

The book is called ‘No Way Out’ and is written by Sunday Times political commentator Tim Shipman who chronicles the key negotiations and parliamentary wrangling over Brexit.

According to Politico, in the book, Shipman writes specifically, that in March 2019 and during a four-hour meeting in Strasbourg with May, Juncker “smoked cigarettes constantly, despite EU rules banning smoking in offices.”

The smoke was so thick that Theresa May’s throat closed up, making her voice unable to come out. But according to the book’s author May was “too polite to complain” – despite one of her aides anonymously calling Juncker “rude”.

As May tried to “sell” the revised deal in the House of Commons afterwards, her voice began to visibly fade.

The book even claims how parliamentary authorities were concerned about May’s health at the time.

“A doctor had been called and the House of Commons authorities were so concerned about May’s health that Sgt. [ένας αξιωματούχος των Κοινοτήτων] hatched a plan to remove her,” Shipman writes.

In the vote that followed May’s presentation of the revised deal – agreed with Juncker – May was defeated by 149 votes, despite last-minute concessions she had secured from the EU.

A week later she told her party that she “will not lead the UK into the next stage of Brexit negotiations”, declaring her intention to resign soon. She left office two months later after her party finished 5th in the European Parliament elections.

“If she can’t even get someone to quit smoking, she’s hardly going to get anything more out of them,” Shipman said of May’s meeting with Juncker, citing a Conservative minister who spoke on condition of anonymity.