Our heavenly future, once we are free of this infernal union

So Donald Tusk, self-styled Satan and the EU’S very own diablo, wishes a special place in hell for Brexiteers, and the punishment that the EU seems determined to mete out has reached a new high in hyperbole.

The fact that a serious politician at the centre of the engine room, dare I say furnace, of the EU has stooped to this must indicate the unholy Brussels trinity of Tusk, Martin Selmayr and Jean-claude Juncker is feeling the heat.

Under the Withdrawal Agreement that Parliament has so far refused to endorse, they’d be poking us with a three-pronged stick for eternity. The UK would be trapped in the dungeon of a customs union – unable to adjust tariffs or make meaningful trade deals, and unable to escape. We would continue under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and have no say on the rules used to torture us. A perfect devil’s brew.

All this is designed to keep us in the EU, in all but name, and sufficiently miserable and shackled as to make us want to return to the EU fold. If not hell, it’s a perpetual purgatory.

Almost too late to find an accord, we now face a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea. Fortunately, we are a maritime nation of adventurers and merchants and the deep blue sea has always attracted us.

Even now, the UK and the EU could agree, under World Trade Organisation rules, to continue the current trade arrangements while we negotiate a free-trade deal, to the benefit of both parties. This would mean no transition period, no customs union, no ECJ. But Remainers prefer the wages of sin, or at least vested interests designed for the elite.

So, as we leave next month we look forward to our heaven – low taxes, low tariffs and global free trade. While we build Jerusalem, the poor, innocent souls trapped in debt-ridden Italy, the jobless of Greece and Spain and those overwhelmed by surging humanity in Poland and Hungary must stay in an EU that looks like a painting of which Pieter Bruegel would be proud.

John Longworth is chairman of the campaign group Leave Means Leave. He is on the advisory board of Economists for Free Trade and is a former director general of the British Chambers of Commerce