Paralysis over Brexit means the country is burying its head in the sand over the very real challenges ahead

The European elections Theresa May never intended Britain to participate in are now only two weeks away. They are inevitably being fought as a proxy contest for Brexit by all the political parties. The results will be interpreted as a verdict on Brexit too, just as last week’s English local elections have been, and probably in much the same careless way.

Yet it would be a stretch to pretend that, for once in our recent history, the UK’s European elections are actually focusing on Britain’s and Europe’s place in the 21st-century world. The truth is far less flattering. These elections can better be understood as another episode in the national – and, in particular, Conservative – trauma over the historic decline of British power, of which the referendum was an interim climax. The elections are therefore unlikely to be cathartic or cleansing. On the contrary, they are dragging us deeper into the ongoing psychodrama that was intensified by the vote in 2016.