Giant butter mountains, wine lakes and an apocryphal EU ban on bendy bananas formed the mythological backdrop to Britain’s 2016 Brexit referendum debacle. Yet while many Vote Leave claims were exaggerated, inaccurate or blatantly untrue, the EU’s capacity for laying itself open to ridicule is undiminished 10 years on. Take the strange case of the whingeing EU commissioners, annoyed that their officially provided electric vehicles cannot manage the time-consuming 280-mile journey between Brussels and Strasbourg without stopping to recharge.

This important issue, first reported by Politico, raises vital questions. Do these highly paid bureaucrats really need chauffeur-driven “company cars”? Surely they could catch a train, or fly, or cycle. EV use is mandatory for road trips. The vehicles are supplied in line with the EU’s Green Deal emissions-cutting policy, which commissioners might be expected to support, not carp about. So why is the commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, allowed a petrol engine? The biggest question of all is why make these tedious Brussels-Strasbourg journeys in the first place?

The answer is the European parliament does not deign to operate like any old common-or-garden parliament. It holds sessions in both cities, as laid down by treaty. Twelve times a year, commissioners, officials and hundreds of MEPs make the trip at a cost to taxpayers of tens of millions of euros. In 2023, a train due to take MEPs to Strasbourg was accidentally diverted to Disneyland, which some unkind people thought only fitting. Yet for all the trouble and expense, France would never allow Strasbourg to be bypassed. National prestige is at stake.

Such EU “gravy train” stories scandalised UK Brexiters but do not appear to faze today’s voters on Europe’s northernmost fringes, where renewed interest and even enthusiasm for the EU is unexpectedly growing. Iceland will hold a........

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