The politician leading the European Parliament’s Brexit negotiating team has conceded that integrating Britain into the EU may have been an “impossible” dream – but predicted that future generations will try again and succeed.

Guy Verhofstadt gave an honest assessment of the long standing differences between Britain and Brussels during a sweeping historical speech during the debate on Brexit negotiations in Strasbourg this morning.

Summarising the relationship, he said:

“The relationship between Britain and Europe was never an easy relationship. Let’s recognise that. It was never a love affair and certainly not a question of wild passion. “It was more, I think, a little bit a marriage of convenience.”

And he received applause from UKIP MEPs when he added:

“Perhaps let’s be honest and recognise between us: it was impossible maybe to unite Great Britain with the continent. Naive maybe to reconcile the legal system of Napoleon with the common law of the British Empire. And perhaps it was never meant to be.”

But he wiped the smiles of their faces as he finished with a flurry, saying:

“Our predecessors should never be blamed for having tried. Never I think, because it’s important, as in politics as in life, to try – a new partnership, new horizons, to reach out to the other at the other side of the channel. “I’m also convinced and 100% sure about one thing: that there will be one day or another day, colleagues, a young man or a young woman who will try again. “Who will lead Britain again into the European family once again and a young generation that will see Brexit for what it really is: a cat fight in the Conservative party that got out of hand. “A loss of time. A waste of energy. and I think stupidity.”

Nigel Farage earned himself a telling off from the Italian president of the European Parliament for accusing Verhofstadt and MEPs of “behaving like the maffia” in his response.

You can watch Farage covering himself in the country in glory (again) below: