It is an odd time to be British in Brussels.

I moved here in January of this year and I’m just about starting to get a taste of the city. There are some easy things to learn. Don’t eat at any of the restaurants around Grand Place unless you want to look like a tourist. You can never know enough about beer to come across as knowledgeable so don’t even bother. Accept that the first thing people ask you about is what you do for a living — the complete opposite of Berlin, where I lived before.

When people realize you’re British, they look at you sadly and ask about Brexit.

Most are broadly sympathetic. They shake their heads and ask me if I’m planning to take out European citizenship before it’s too late. “I couldn’t believe the results,” they’ll say (so it wasn’t just out of touch Londoners who misread things), “it’s really too crazy”. Nobody ever asks me if I was a Leave supporter; it’s a not something worth asking, because the answer is so obvious. Americans and Britons in the city half-jokingly call themselves “political refugees”.

It seems pretty clear that there is no turning Brexit around at this point. It is also alarmingly obvious that the UK Government is hopelessly outmatched by the European counterparts in these negotiations. They have been mired by scandals and infighting, unable to pass much legislation or put forward a clear vision of what Brexit will actually look like.

That’s why the British tabloids have had an open lane to blame ‘EU sharks’ for ‘manipulating’ Britain into staying in the customs union or jacking up the price of the divorce bill. Only one side of the negotiations is coming in serious intent.

From what I can tell reading Brussels news and talking to different people around town, people used to think that British officials were keeping their strategy quiet, waiting for the Commission to make the first move and then responding with some cunning ploy. What a generous opinion. Nobody thinks there’s some hidden strategy anymore.

The former British Ambassador to the EU, Sir Ivan Rogers, summed up the consensus view when discussing Britain’s current position on the border issue in Ireland, describing “a fantasy island unicorn model” that nobody outside of Whitehall took seriously. European Council President Donald Tusk has made it very clear that, without resolution on Ireland, there will be no withdrawal agreement and no transition deal.

Here’s a shortlist of all the Brexit legislation that is yet to be passed: money laundering, nuclear safeguards, trade, cross border taxation, animal welfare, haulage, agriculture, migration and fisheries. All that has to get sorted out after the withdrawal agreement gets signed. March 28th marked 1 year to go until Article 50 is enacted. That’s an awful lot to get done in a very short amount of time.

As I’ve said on Connected & Disaffected before, I have much more faith in the EU fighting to protect my individual rights than I do the UK Home Office, regardless of my nationality.

The pattern of cruel behaviour, from Theresa May’s days to Amber Rudd’s, is clear. It is unarguable. Nobody who is reading about the Windrush scandal, or hearing stories from people impacted by it could describe the Home Office as a cradle of tolerance or wit or liberality — all those ‘British’ sensibilities that awakens the weaponised mix of nostalgia and patriotism that fuels so much Leave quackery.

via GIPHY

There is still a notion, I think, that being British elicits respect from the rest of the world. It is probably not as widespread as it used to be, but it clings on as a vision of Britain as a symbol of success and civilization. It would move the national conversation no end if everybody spent three or four months being British in Brussels or Paris or Vienna or beyond. Actually hearing how people respond to your accent and all the news and history that comes with it.

I suspect pity isn’t what most of the hardline Brexiteers hope for. Anger would be better than pity, but that’s never seemed even a remote possibility. People feel sorry for me, trying to cling onto the mainland while my country drifts away, out of sight, out of mind.

There’s no outrage or accusations. There aren’t many questions about how or why it happened. It’s simple concern, person to person. People certainly don’t spend much time thinking about Britain or how it will look in the new world. That was another easy rule: people are pretty indifferent about the sort of place Britain will become, because it gets more unlikable by the day. It’s hard to root for anybody but the EU, frankly, no matter where you come from.

Coming up

The last ever cohort of British MEPs have just under one year left. What are they up to? We’ve spent the last few weeks speaking with British MEPs about their experiences working in the European Parliament in a truly unique political period. Watch this space.

You know the drill:

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