Europe sees Boris Johnson as a showman buffoon, but they’re still glued to the soap opera

“There may be a misplaced hope that if he leaves, his replacement will make things easier with Brussels,” says Camino Mortera-Martinez, the head of the Brussels office at the Centre for European Reform. “Some think things cannot be worse, but they could. Johnson’s handling of Brexit has been amoral. But for all his misadventures, we should be careful what we wish for.”

Ms Mortera-Martinez also points out that the UK’s departure from the EU means that Mr Johnson’s fate now has little impact on the bloc. “There is part of Europe that now sees his troubles like a soap opera,” she says. “But it is no longer existential. Brexit has not been part of the agenda for the past three years and it is only intermittently irritating. We know that there will not be a reversal of Brexit.”