DELUDED EU BRIGADE STILL CAN’T BELIEVE WE’RE LEAVING

EMMANUEL MACRON headed back to his Parisian palace after his Berkshire pub lunch with Theresa May this week leaving a cheeky invitation for Britain to give up on Brexit behind him.

The French President, speaking through a senior aide, joined Eurocrats Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker in issuing a plea for Brits to think again about leaving the European club. Anti-Brussels campaigners suspect a campaign to soften up the UK electorate for a last-ditch attempt to sabotage the country’s departure may have begun. The warm words from the EU elite came as no surprise to Whitehall insiders working on the fine details of the Brexit negotiations.

“Whenever you sit down with EU officials from member states you almost always hear the same thing,” one source close to the British negotiating team told me, adding: “They end up saying: ‘You’re not really going to go, are you?’”

With just over 14 months to go to the official Brexit date of March 29 2019, EU chiefs are in denial about our departure from the bloc. Their delusion is being encouraged by the demands from hard-line Brexit opponents for a second referendum.

They may have a chance to try to trigger such a poll when the Government’s EU Withdrawal Bill is scrutinised in the House of Lords. Yet Brexiteers suspect Brussels supporters will not have the confidence to risk another poll.

One minister closely involved in the Leave side during the EU referendum campaign told me: “I can’t say I’d relish the thought of going through it all again. But if it came to it I think it would be much easier to make the Leave case a second time.

“So much of Project Fear has proved to be rubbish and the EU has shown that it is more determined than ever to push ahead with full integration and become a fully fledged super state.”

Brussels fanatics look set to continue to keep their mistaken belief that Brexit will be cancelled for a few more months. The last thing they want to do is to put it to the test.