According to the family lawyer Fiona Shackleton, people behave 25 per cent worse during a divorce than they usually do. As it seeks to break up with Brussels, Britain (we can probably drop the “great” now) is coming across as a most embittered spouse. In the 43-year marriage we were the nag — whining about our ex-inamorato’s spending, about who they want to hang out with and how they imposed restrictions on our fishing habit.

Now, as we prepare to file divorce papers, we don’t seem to care who is collateral. So the 2.8 million EU nationals in the UK, of whom an estimated one million are in London, are forced to be the proverbial pawns. It’s not custody we’re after, we just want to use them to ensure a juicier settlement. Liam Fox, whose return to government shows the shortening shelf-life for political disgrace — he was forced to quit as Defence Secretary in 2011 — said last year that their uncertain status is “one of our main cards” during negotiations.

Is that a way to treat anyone? They’ve been left in limbo. This week, MPs rejected an amendment by the Lords to guarantee their rights unilaterally before the Brexit negotiations begin. Even some of those who already have the right to remain post-Brexit have received threatening letters telling them to “make arrangements to leave” and then were faced with Kafkaesque battles to find someone at the Home Office who would speak to them. The recipients of these letters included an octogenarian Dutch man with Alzheimer’s who has been here for more than two decades, and a two-year-old.

Economics is on the side of EU nationals. They pay more in taxes than they take in benefits. Although the data on this isn’t watertight, estimates suggest that recently-arrived migrants put £1.34 into the public coffers for every £1 they remove. They also prop up national institutions such as the health service and Pret A Manger (“Project Fear” should have mentioned the risk Brexit poses to our superclub sandwiches). Already, some are quitting these shores and heading for somewhere that has a metaphorical welcome banner at the border. That’ll be doctors and nurses we’re losing, as well as university lecturers, builders and entrepreneurs.

They’re also more economically useful than the retirees we export to sunnier climes to burden local health services. During the referendum, after Nigel Farage unveiled that heinous “breaking point” poster showing refugees at the Slovenian border, the Remain camp could have retaliated with a mock-up of the reverse: an image of sunburnt Brits who still haven’t learnt the local language, heading back here from Spain and France. Those who see this as a poker game and EU nationals as bargaining chips somehow don’t see that we’re holding a dud hand.

It isn’t just an economic issue, though. Pride in Britain was surely the point on which Farage’s inverted pyramid of piss of a Brexit case was built. But this treatment of EU nationals feels distinctly un-British. It doesn’t help the underdog, and it’s not playing fair.

Limbo is a cruel place. We should release them from it, before our vote means they vote with their feet.

Domestic drama without the bliss

Big Little Lies, the mini-series that started this week on Sky Atlantic, will be manna to those who claim that TV now trumps film. Gripping, and with a dream cast that includes Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman and Shailene Woodley (it smashes the Bechdel test), it focuses on the parental politics of the privileged.

Not all reviews have been kind. The Hollywood Reporter said it “feels like a soapy ABC drama, with nudity”.

That was meant as a criticism, even though it sounds like a hard sell. Still, it strikes me that dramas about women in a domestic setting often get dismissed as “soapy”, the underlying assumption being that such lives are small. It’s the Austen problem, when really, all of human life is there.



If at first you don’t succeed...

A momentous referendum was held recently. Sure, some sceptics said there were more pressing issues of the day but this plebiscite was vital to determine a direction of travel.

One side had tradition in its arsenal — its arguments came from the heart; the other had modernity and economics: its arguments came from the head.

I mean Muirfield’s vote to let women join the golf club, of course. Notably, to bring in a change this significant, half of those who bothered to turn out wasn’t enough — two-thirds of members had to support it. There’s a lesson here too, one that Theresa May might heed: sometimes it takes a second referendum to get the right answer.

Hunt has lost the plot

Jeremy Hunt’s abiding mission — to chip away at the vestiges of happiness that junior doctors cling to — continues apace. The health secretary said this week that medics could be forced to work for the NHS for at least five years after finishing their training.

Ah yes, conscription! The employee-motivating tool that all the management books recommend! Perhaps Hunt could handcuff nurses to the operating tables too.

There are hitches with this Huntian pact, though. How do we compensate the countries whose medics we “borrow”? And how do we stop doctors fleeing at the end of their five-year sentences?

Moreover, given that students assist with patient care, shouldn’t we be paying them for that work?