The Daily Mail reports that Donald Tusk, one of the presidents of the European Union, said this.

Regardless of magic spells, this means a de facto will to radically loosen relations with the EU, something that goes by the name of “hard Brexit”.

‘This scenario will in the first instance be painful for Britons. In fact, the words uttered by one of the leading campaigners for Brexit and proponents of the “cake philosophy” was pure illusion: that one can have the EU cake and eat it too.

‘To all who believe in it, I propose a simple experiment. Buy a cake, eat it, and see if it is still there on the plate. The brutal truth is Brexit will be a loss for all of us. There will be no cakes on the table. For anyone. There will be only salt and vinegar.

‘If you ask me if there is any alternative to this bad scenario, I would like to tell you that yes, there is. And I think it is useless to speculate about “soft Brexit” because of all the reasons I’ve mentioned. These would be purely theoretical speculations. In my opinion, the only real alternative to a “hard Brexit” is “no Brexit”.

I don;t know if he knows his Kipling, but his comment about salt and vinegar reflects a truth Kipling knew: the tribes cannot fully meet, for part of a nation is that unwritten.

This is not because a tribe is more virtuous, but that it thinks one way or another.

The Stranger

Canadian

The Stranger within my gate,
He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk–
I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
But not the soul behind.

The men of my own stock,
They may do ill or well,
But they tell the lies I am wanted to,
They are used to the lies I tell;
And we do not need interpreters
When we go to buy or sell.

The Stranger within my gates,
He may be evil or good,
But I cannot tell what powers control–
What reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
Shall repossess his blood.

The men of my own stock,
Bitter bad they may be,
But, at least, they hear the things I hear,
And see the things I see;
And whatever I think of them and their likes
They think of the likes of me.

This was my father’s belief
And this is also mine:
Let the corn be all one sheaf–
And the grapes be all one vine,
Ere our children’s teeth are set on edge
By bitter bread and wine.

Rudyard Kipling

Mr Tusk. Brexit will be bitter. Bitter indeed. For the EU. For the empire Britain left behind are not strangers: Brussels is.