The monstrous teenagers of our Brexit government are sorely testing the patience of the adults in the room

Could this have been the Cummings-Johnson masterplan all along – make the EU so infuriated that someone, anyone, will veto an extension?

After three years of endlessly asking what is wrong with us, the psychiatric questioning shifts across the Channel to ask what is wrong with them?

The EU 27 have tolerated the cocky abuse with astounding reserves of the patience, courtesy and unity that emigrated from these parts a while ago. It starts to look like some form of self-abusive mental disorder.

They have turned deaf ears to being styled as Nazis to the Remainers’ appeasers, to the rancorous paralysis of successive Tory governments, and to the infantile imperial fantasising of the ERG.