Whisper it, but the UK and the EU are starting to mend their broken relationship | Helene von Bismarck

After six hostile years, Britain is realising that, even after Brexit, it can't turn its back on its European neighbours

The soap opera of British politics in recent months may have eclipsed something more consequential for the UK in the long run than the revolving doors in Downing Street. The relationship between the UK and the rest of Europe is slowly and quietly changing.

It is too early to speak of a turning point, but there is at least a chance that we will look back on 2022 as the year when Britons and other Europeans finally escaped a downward spiral that has, since the Brexit referendum, poisoned not just the relationship between the UK and the EU, but bilateral relationships between the UK and many EU countries. Things might not be getting better, but they have at least, for now, stopped getting worse. In the sad world of UK-EU relations, this is progress.

Helene von Bismarck is a German historian and author who specialises in the UK's interactions with the world