The wisest Brexiters – such as Nigel Lawson – knew how good life is in Europe

Nigel Lawson on budget day in 1984. He retired to France, he once said, because of the old-fashioned way of life and the health service. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

With all the horrors in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan – not to say (a touch of bathos here) the abysmal state of our Brexit-hit economy – a bank holiday weekend in La France profonde came as a most welcome relief. We were staying with a friend in the south-west region of Aveyron, near a village called La Salvetat-Peyralès.

I was struck by the thriving nature of the local rural economy – no potholes in sight – and the general atmosphere of wellbeing. As usual, as on all my trips to the continent, I met people who expressed astonishment at the harm the UK had done to itself with the Brexit referendum.