I’ve visited about a dozen European countries since 23 June, and only twice has it been suggested to me that Brexit was a good idea. The first occasion was when an aide to Viktor Orbán said the Hungarian prime minister thought that quitting the European Union would work out well for Britain, if not for anyone else. The second came when a friend and I hitched a ride to the beach during a holiday on a Greek island. “Brexit means Grexit!” the couple who picked us up exclaimed, before launching into encomiums on the virtues of Yanis Varoufakis, the former finance minister who drove Greece’s economy into the ground.
Even Britain’s allies are starting to marvel at the daily horrors across the Channel. “The Tories are in the hands of nutcases,” a UK-friendly EU official told me after the Conservative party conference. “Poor Britannia.” The antics of the cabinet’s Three Brexiteers are monitored with morbid fascination. A senior German politician told me he emerged from an hours-long discussion with Boris Johnson staggered by the Foreign Secretary’s ignorance of Britain’s possible exit paths. If David Davis’s Commons performances have become useful for brightening up dull days, a special degree of scorn is reserved for Liam Fox, known to many European politicians as a swivel-eyed figure they would encounter at think tank events, wittering on about the UK joining the North American Free Trade Agreement.
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