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

When I met the Dutch politician Geert Wilders years ago, he was set on ‘Nexit’. Now he too would rather stay in the EU

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”. The UK’s economy is “5% worse off than it would be in the EU” according to a recent well-researched report by Goldman Sachs. Welcome to Brexit Britain!

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. We agreed what a disaster was in store if the UK did not come to its senses.

I also met the rightwing Dutch “firebrand” Geert Wilders, who at the time, and for some time after, was a campaigner for “Nexit” – the Netherlands leaving the EU.

Wilders was very interested in British politics, and I did my best to inform him, not least on the horrors of Brexit. I know I didn’t change his mind about Nexit – this was in 2017 – but the evidence of the damage wreaked by Brexit is now manifest to all. Wilders has apparently dropped his campaign to leave the union and prefers to alter it “from within”. If there is one positive thing Brexit has achieved, it has been to have a salutary effect on rightwing continental politicians’ opposition to the EU.