Even Europe’s far-right firebrands seem to sense Brexit is a disaster | William Keegan

Exports are performing badly, pace the fantasy world of the Daily Express; supply lines for imports once regarded as routine are disrupted or discontinued altogether; staff shortages owing to new restrictions on travel and employment of our fellow Europeans are hurting the hospitality trade in what we used to boast about as our “service economy”.

In the early days of the Brexit disaster, I met Michel Barnier, the EU’s impressive negotiator, at a high-powered conference on Lake Como organised by the Ambrosetti Institute.

One exception is Jacob Rees-Mogg, who has a great sense of humour and claims with a straight face: “There is no doubt that leaving the EU was the best decision we could have made for our economy.”

Now, last week there was a report in the Financial Times about a paper from a political consultancy claiming that if Labour won the next election handsomely it would immediately seek to move closer to the EU via “a de facto customs union by another name”.

In my opinion, such protestations must be a holding operation until, one hopes, this miserable gang of Tories are thrown out and sensible relations with the rest of Europe can be resumed.

skip past newsletter promotion Analysis and opinion on the week's news, culture and stories brought to you by the best Observer writers