The balance of economic terror over Brexit has shifted over the last year.

The eurozone is more vulnerable to the shock of no-deal rupture on punitive Macronesque terms than it was at the point of peak hubris in December 2017, when EU negotiators set the trap of the Irish backstop.

Europe’s QE boomlet has since deflated. The underlying pathologies of monetary union are again in evidence. The bloc is stuck with a North-South chasm in competitiveness that has left a string of countries in near permanent malaise, starved of public investment and left with no way out other than internal devaluations. This has led to the Gilets Jaunes in France, and Lega-Five Star revolt in Italy.

You would not know it from the Gothic alarmism of Fleet Street that Britain’s economy has grown faster than the eurozone over the last eight months. France is close to stall-speed. Barclays has issued a recession call for Italy.

The Sentix index of expectations for the eurozone has fallen below the boom-bust line to minus 18.8, the lowest since the EMU banking crisis in 2012. Manfred Hubner from Sentix said it evoked “dark memories” of the months leading up to the global financial crisis, with “practically no glimmer of hope” anywhere.