Why would Britain want to be a member of a club like the EU?

The past three years of agonising non-progress on Brexit have damaged Britain in many ways. Our political institutions have looked ridiculous and, through endless uncertainty, unnerved markets. But we have also learned much about the EU. Its behaviour, and that of its officials, has served to reassure those who were uncertain about their Brexit vote that the UK could never be happy as part of this club. Better to be the EU’s greatest ally than its most reluctant and disruptive member.

But post-Brexit relations will be shaped, in no small part, by the process of leaving. The Prime Minister’s trip this week to Luxembourg was a good example of what can go wrong. For weeks, the UK government has been working on changes to the Irish backstop, in an attempt to generate a compromise that can satisfy both the EU and MPs who three times rejected the previous withdrawal agreement. The Prime Minister proposes a compromise that would create a single market for agricultural goods in Ireland but would otherwise allow Northern Ireland to diverge, along with the rest of the UK, on other matters of regulation and trade.