A few weeks ago, Boris Johnson made a point about the EU negotiations and the futility of the idea of punishing Britain for the sake of it. ‘If Monsieur Hollande wants to administer punishment beatings to anybody who chooses to escape’, he said, ‘rather in the manner of some World War II movie, then I don’t think that is the way forward, and actually it’s not in the interests of our friends and partners’. Cue howls of outrage. ‘Abhorrent and deeply unhelpful’, said Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s chief Brexit negotiator. But was Boris really so wide of the mark?
Yesterday Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, gave an interview to Bild on Sunday where he boasted that no other EU country would consider leaving the union once they see how harshly Britain will be treated in negotiations. ‘The remaining member states will fall in love with each other again and renew their vows with the European Union,’ he said. ‘They
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