Did you vote for Brexit? It’s just an irrelevance, sneers the Beeb

Talk about sore losers. Some people (and the BBC is full of them) are tying themselves in knots to prove that Brexit is, as the Corporation’s own Europe editor, katya adler, puts it, ‘an irrelevance’.

at the end of an hour of trotting from Italy to Hungary and across to France, in high heels and a red Fiat 500, katya reached this absurd conclusion in After Brexit: The Battle For Europe (BBC2). Her view? Britain’s referendum was probably a complete waste of time.

‘It could be our national debate about Brexit turns out to be an irrelevance,’ she crowed. ‘Sooner or later the EU as we know it may no longer be there for us to leave.’

It’s as though the Remainers, unable to prevent us from quitting the EU at the ballot box, in the courts or in Parliament, have now decided that the whole exercise didn’t matter anyway, so nyah nyah nyah.

The BBC insists, of course, that its Europe editor is strictly impartial. But since she boasted in her online CV, before she took the TV post three years ago, that she had chaired debates ‘including for the EU Commission and the austrian government during its EU Presidency’, we can judge her impartiality for ourselves.

She was eager to emphasise her Euro-friendly credentials last night, as she visited Tuscany and introduced us to her ‘childhood sweetheart’, an Italian restaurateur whose business collapsed amid recent economic chaos. at one point, 1,000 Italian firms were going under every day.

katya illustrated this by walking round Empoli near Florence — the destination, she said, for all her family holidays in the Eighties — and looking sadly at all the empty store-fronts where shops have closed.

She could have made the same point in any struggling seaside town in Britain, but somehow I don’t think many of her childhood holidays were spent in Uk resorts.

Meeting vigilante politicians in Hungary and motor-biking rabblerousers in Sicily, she could barely contain her sneers at this populist approach. She watched Italy’s opposition leader Beppe Grillo as he clowned on stage, singing the blues and laughing like a maniac. When they met, katya didn’t so much interview Grillo as humour him, as if he were an escaped lunatic.

Her attitude typified how the Hampstead middle classes can’t comprehend Europe’s new political movements, with Brexit at the forefront — and why they are bewildered too by Donald Trump’s appeal.

Despite katya’s superior tone, this was a tightly edited survey of anti-EU attitudes across the Continent, and the soundbites from contributors were well chosen. Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis demolished the concept of the single currency: ‘It’s a bit like invading Russia. It starts off beautifully but you end up with blood on the snow.’

and columnist alan Posener of the German newspaper Die Welt put the Eastern Europe problem pithily. The former Iron Curtain countries, he said, were part of one monolithic empire under the Soviets and do not ever intend to let that happen again.

Europe was proving dangerous in other ways on The Cruise: Sailing The Mediterranean (ITV). american tourist Charlotte, aged 90, had been bitten by a Barbary ape during a stop-off in Gibraltar.

She had toothmarks in her forearm as though piranhas had been nibbling at her, but Charlotte didn’t seem too worried. ‘Call me Nana,’ she told the nurse.

all the holidaymakers are laid back aboard the Royal Princess, and who can blame them? There’s so much booze sloshing about, they barely need the sea to float on.

One bleary reveller staggered to reception after an especially good night, asking if the shipboard computers could tell him exactly what he’d been up to. Drinking a gallon of Beverly Hills cocktails, it seemed.

Even the couple whose suitcase had been dropped overboard didn’t seem too bothered. Those must be spectacular cocktails.

This series, which ends tonight, has been as moreish as a jug of Beverly Hills. It was often little more than an advert for the cruise line, and was much too fixated with the ship’s plumbing ... but it doesn’t half make you feel like weighing anchor and heading for the sun.