This is why you don’t want to be prime minister, even if the job does come with a nice car.

Boris goes to a Nato summit. He shakes lots of hands. He takes a breather to pose for a photo – and that’s the five seconds that gets slapped online under the headline “European leaders give Boris Johnson the cold shoulder” (New Statesman).

Narrating a disingenuous report for Channel 4, Cathy Newman said, “Coming to Brussels post-Brexit is a lonely business for a British prime minister” – as if the PM had spent the night surfing channels in a Premier Inn – before asking Eurocrats why he wasn’t invited to their EU meeting. The answer, I think, is that Britain is no longer a member of the EU, but the Left has gone so postmodern lately, they probably wonder why Britain doesn’t just self define as Belgium and turn up anyway.

Well, I was in Brussels last week and, contra the mood on Twitter, Europe feels more buoyantly European than it has in a long time, and Britain is absolutely a part of it, sending weapons to Ukraine, beefing up Nato and generally putting some stick about. It is UK Remainers who now seem parochial, refusing to move on from yesterday’s hurt and even, in the case of that fake news flick Boris Does Brussels, reimagining contemporary events as a commentary on unrelated stuff that’s still grinding their gears six years later.

When President Biden said that meetings that bring America and the EU closer are a “victory for all of us,” Alastair Campbell added that they are also “a defeat for the UK. Which is why Brexit was a foreign policy goal for the Kremlin.” Bingo: a conspiracy theory and a contradiction all in one Tweet!

Remainers insist that Leavers yearn for the British empire, that we have an inflated view of our nation’s importance, hence our belief it can “go it alone.” Yet the top complaint of Europhile commentators at present is that Brexit has stripped us of “influence”, that we’re no-longer part of Pax Americana or the EU imperium. The loss of that precious poodle status has them frothing at the mouth.

One can imagine Al in his loft, the walls covered in bits of string, crying “Eureka!” at the moment he identifies the direct link between today’s villain and his eternal bete-noire, a unifying Remainer theory that connects Boris to Putin to (I’m guessing here) Lord Lucan and the Bermuda Triangle.  It is nonsense, of course: Brexit Britain is not dividing the Western alliance, it’s one of its most enthusiastic leaders. Tired, too – for Brexit has already been blamed for the response to Covid, shortages, price increases, Eurovision defeat and, I’ve no doubt, Mr Campbell burning a piece of toast.

There is a point at which all this goes beyond a fair debate about policy and tips over into an unhealthy obsession that, like Morris Dancing and incest, needs to be marginalised by polite society. To still be ranting about Putin stealing a referendum in 2022, when he is, before our very eyes, trying to steal a whole country, is arrested development. It is also irrelevant. It is also boring. Accepting that there is still a Protocol to renegotiate and dividends to cash in (Boris said we could cut VAT on fuel bills, so why don’t we?), the vast majority of us would like to forget about that referendum and focus on more pressing issues, such as building a bomb shelter.

So, let me tell the angry Remainers that the one thing Britain isn’t right now is irrelevant, that if Vlad ever presses that button, you can rest assured that we’ll be one of the first countries to be irradiated. Now, go and enjoy the sunshine!