The EU has made quite a few mistakes on a grand scale in the last quarter of a century, but one of the worst involved giving its top job to an obscure politician from Luxembourg three years ago.

The appointment of Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission in 2014 has turned out to be even more of a failure than his pro-EU critics feared and British eurosceptics hoped. On his watch the UK, the second-largest contributor to EU funds, failed to get decent enough terms to persuade it to stay, following which its electorate opted to leave.

Yet Juncker is the preposterous figure who, rather than resigning over his historic mismanagement, this week imperiously marked Britain’s position papers on Brexit as deserving of