There is a jilted quality to the way some Tories talk about Brexit, which is odd, given that Britain is dumping the European Union. The resentment would make more sense if it were the other way round: if 27 member states had expelled Britain from their club. But after decades of treating everything European as a punishment inflicted on a nation against its will, the habit is hard to break. Even the act of leaving is configured by the Eurosceptic imagination as something done by them to us. There is an illustration in the resignation letter sent by George Eustice, an agriculture minister, to Theresa May last week. Eustice was appalled by the prospect of an article 50 extension, which would, he fretted, be “the final humiliation of our country”. He said the European commission had “not behaved honourably” and had “deliberately made progress slow and difficult”. Yes, George, it would all have been quick and easy without those meddling Brussels bureaucrats.
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Macron knows it. He sees darkness in the underlying character of Brexit, as many EU leaders do. They see it perhaps better than May. She is squinting through the lens of parliamentary arithmetic and party management. Tory eurosceptics have their view warped by the need always to be victims of Brussels. The missing angle – the vital perspective from the other side of the table – is that Brexit is not something Europe is doing to Britain. It is something we chose, for ourselves and are now inflicting on our neighbours.