Hand over a €60 billion ransom or we won’t even start to discuss a trade deal: that, if Jean-Claude Juncker is to be believed, will be the European Union’s opening gambit ahead of Brexit.

Bring it on, I say: the best way to expose a very weak adversary who is pretending to be very strong is to call their bluff. Yet it may never even get to that. At this rate, what is left of the EU could soon be begging us for a trade deal, not the other way around.

The reality is that the EU is edging ever-closer to the abyss: it is at its weakest, most vulnerable since its creation, and it is now touch and go whether it survives 2017 or whether it is swept away in a catastrophic populist revolt.

Trouble is not only brewing in France, where Marine Le Pen keeps gaining ground, but also in the Netherlands, in Greece, in Italy and in eastern Europe.