When he started out as a young civil servant, said Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, a German MP from the liberal Free Democratic party, Britain was “always held up as a model of good diplomacy, of pragmatism and of self-restraint”.
That was then. Now, with the UK’s scheduled exit barely a week away and still no clarity in sight, “No one would sign up to that view,” Lambsdorff said. “Now, the UK is seen as neither pragmatic, self-restrained, nor a model.”
For politicians, diplomats and officials across the continent, the past two-and-a-half years of Britain’s fraught, seemingly interminable and increasingly shambolic departure from the EU have proved an eye-opener.
Some have responded with humour. Nathalie Loiseau, France’s Europeminister, said recently that if she had one, she would call her cat Brexit: “It wakes me up miaowing because it wants to go out. When I open the door, its sits there, undecided. Then it looks daggers at me when I put it out.”
Others have found it harder to laugh. To the shock of many, Brexit has revealed a country they long looked up to locked in a narrative of its own exceptionalism, talking mainly to itself, incoherent, entitled, incapable of compromise (with itself or its neighbours), wholly unrealistic, and startlingly ignorant of the workings of an organisation it has belonged to for nearly 50 years. » | Jon Henley and Guardian correspondents | Wednesday, March 20, 2019
