Europe is fed up with Brexit, but it’s still best for all if Britain stays in | Timothy Garton Ash

Macron may have doubts, but if the deal isn’t approved the EU must grant the UK an extension – for its own sake as well as ours

Granted, Brexit is driving everyone mad. We Brits owe all our European friends a sincere apology, a bottle of whisky and complimentary tickets to a Royal Shakespeare Company performance of Hamlet. For Britain is now Hamlet, forever agonising over whether Brexit is to be or not to be.

So I can perfectly understand why Europeans such as French president Emmanuel Macron just want to be shot of us, so as to push ahead with an important, ambitious agenda for the whole European Union. Nonetheless, it remains in Europe’s own enlightened, long-term interest to go the extra kilometre. This means, concretely, that if the British parliament does not approve Boris Johnson’s new deal this week, the EU should offer an article 50 extension, as formally requested in the letter sent (though childishly not signed) by Johnson.

Related: Why the EU should stick to the Brexit deadline and rule out any extensions | Cas Mudde

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