It is sobering how the mask of benign benevolent meritocracy has immediately slipped the moment the UK left and it became clear our population had seen through it and were not about to be wooed back.
Whatever the EU may have been, or was imagined as being in the past, now it is rapidly going down a dark and dangerous path. 'Democracies' are seen in the same way as China viewed Hong Kong. Something to tolerate as long as it kept the population content with the illusion of controlling their destiny but quickly swept aside if those desires clashed with the unelected rulers plans and views.
It started with the EU, eight years ago, wanting to roll those 120 bilateral trade agreements into one. It was a reasonable ambition you might think - a tidying-up exercise, a rationalisation which would make the rules easier for everyone to understand.
But, needless to say, that wasn’t just what the EU had in mind.
It wanted to seize the opportunity to extend its free movement rules to Switzerland and more effectively to impose its regulations on the country. In future, Switzerland was to be forced into ‘dynamic alignment’ with EU regulations. In other words, the EU would lay down the rules that it expected Switzerland to follow, on environmental law, labour law and everything else.
Moreover, it expected Switzerland to bend to its social security rules, which, so the Swiss feared, would have meant EU citizens being able to settle in Switzerland and gain full access to its welfare system from day one.