At a Chatham House terms event a couple of weeks ago, a senior Brit with long experience in EU affairs expressed hope that "interior ministers" would take on the theologian of the EU. 1/
Seehofer's note about Brexit (and Kurz's intervention yesterday) show there was considerable substance to these hopes. 2/
Hopes for success in this (and also for other pragmatists yet to be determined to emerge and call for a 3 freedom single market) still live among British remainers who consider themselves liberal. 3/
But they also betray the moral bankruptcy of the pragmatic British remained position. They're looking for the enemies of liberalism and European integration to help keep Britain, if not in, at least close enough to have influence. 4/
How do they imagine Britain would use such an arrangement? To isolate the anti-European far right and cooperate with the mainstream in France and Germany? Or to ally themselves with their ideological nationalist project and lend their weight to destroy the bloc from within? 5/
