On the question of citizens’ rights on both sides of the Channel, the EU side is publicly adopting an equally take-it-or-leave it position.

At the end of last Saturday’s European leaders’ summit, Mr Juncker announced that his Commission had drawn up a complete list of all the rights for EU citizens in the UK that it wanted preserved and protected in a deal governed by the European Court of Justice.

Prosecuted to their fullest extent, the EU demands would give EU citizens in the UK better rights than British citizens and would effectively make the UK Supreme Court subservient to the ECJ after Brexit.

“We have already prepared a text which could be adopted immediately if our British friends would be ready to sign it like that,” said Mr Juncker, before adding, in a tacit admission that the EU side were grandstanding, “that will probably not happen.”

Of course it won’t. The EU likes to pretend that the coming Brexit talks are not a negotiation, but in reality they must be. Again, who is being reasonable and who is being unreasonable here?

It is true that Article 50 gives the EU side the power to drive this process off the cliff, if it really wants to, but it will have to answer to its own public for that.