Mr De Wever, whose party is part of the same group in the European Parliament as the British Conservatives said that he “hope that Cameron would win, but always believed that he couldn’t win”.

Mr De Wever, visited Mr Cameron at 10 Downing Street 10 late last year. Then the Flemish nationalist leader expressed his support for the reform to the conditions of the UK’s membership that Mr Cameron had negotiated with the EU.

Bart De Wever says that he remembers Mr Cameron having been very optimistic about the Brexit referendum.

However, something in the body language of Mr Cameron’s staff suggested to Mr De Wever that all was not right. "I have personally never believed that he could win the referendum”.

According to Mr De Wever, this was due to something in the British character. “A kind of silly, chauvinistic reflex that stems from their country having a different history than the rest of Europe and them looking more towards the United States than the continent”.