Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, today said that 'the door was open' for Britain to change its mind over Brexit.

“I hope that that will be heard clearly in London,” Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, told MEPs in Strasbourg, said of Mr Tusk's comments.

Speaking in the European Parliament, Mr Tusk warned that the remaining 27 EU member states would stay united during the tough Brexit negotiations ahead.

“Wasn’t it David Davis himself who said that if a democracy cannot change its mind, it ceases to be a democracy?” Mr Tusk said, referring to Britain’s Brexit Secretary.

“If the UK sticks to its decision to leave, Brexit will become a reality with all its negative consequences in March next year. Unless there is a change of heart among our British friends,”

“We here on the continent haven’t had a change of heart. Our hearts are still open to you,” the former prime minister of Poland, who chairs meetings of EU leaders at Brussels summits, added.

Some MEPs were less conciliatory. Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator, mocked Nigel Farage for his apparent support for a second Brexit referendum.

Mr Verhofstadt said that the former UKIP leader appeared to be “disorientated” after his meeting over tea and coffee with Michel Barnier, the EU’s Brexit negotiator, last week.