There was little doubt who came ahead in the spat between Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, and Rishi Sunak last week over Britain rejoining the EU. She began her salvo acknowledging that the EU had “goofed up” in losing Britain, but that it would fall to her children’s generation “to fix it”. The “direction of travel was clear”. Britain one day would rejoin.
The substance behind No 10’s inevitable refutation was so threadbare that it bordered on the comic. But then there is no better defence to hand. The prime minister, intoned his spokesman, did not think Brexit was in danger, trying to reinforce the point by declaring: “It’s through our Brexit freedoms that we are, right now, considering how to further strengthen our migration system. It is through our Brexit freedoms we are ensuring patients in the UK can get access to medicines faster, that there is improved animal welfare. That is very much what we are focused on.”
