What does the future hold for the European Union?

Sean O'Grady considers the bloc’s reasons to be cheerful – and fearful – when Brexit is finally over

A Banksy artwork in Dover last year (Getty Images)

Well, I’ve checked again, and I’m sorry to report that the famous British newspaper headline “Fog in Channel; Continent Cut Off” never actually appeared. Not in The Yorkshire Post before the Great War, nor in The Times in 1957, nor anywhere else. Alas, as Boris Johnson would say, it is apocryphal.

Still, the fact that it has proved such a persistent myth reveals much about Anglocentric attitudes, right up to our times. Understandably the British have been obsessed with the consequences of Brexit for Britain (albeit with some increasing boredom setting in); they seem less bothered about what it will do to the European Union.