As the general election rages on, it’s back to business for Brussels

The general election may be the centre of attention in Britain, but to Eurocrats and diplomats of Brussels it’s a welcome opportunity to spend some time thinking about other things.

Lots of British Brussels correspondents have been recalled back to London by their outlets to help out with the general election – a sort of “all hands on deck” order. As a result, things are a bit quieter than usual here.

I’ll be following them back to Blighty in due course to do my bit, but for now I’m still here to take the temperature.

And what can I say? The continent is genuinely starting to tire of this Brexit yarn: there was a huge collective yawn at the prospect of another summit to decide on the latest Article 50 extension, and leaders in the end managed to sort it by “written procedure”. That basically means email.

That’s not to say people here aren’t keeping one eye on things in Brexitland. There’s been the odd cheeky intervention here or there from the European Commission, seemingly designed to push the UK in the direction of voting for the deal it struck with Boris Johnson.

But there is also a sense of obliviousness here to the political situation in the UK, for the first time in a long time. On Wednesday, a spokesperson for the European Commission insisted to us remaining reporters that actually, Johnson had not got a new Brexit deal and what he went home with was merely a version of Theresa May’s agreement with “clarifications”.

This would have been political dynamite a few weeks ago, blowing a hole in Johnson’s entire strategy. But little came of it, because the UK isn’t really paying attention to what’s going on here anymore, and the commission can afford to make those kinds of mistakes.

Instead, the focus is on trying to get a new commission together, and other regular humdrum politics. There’ll be a vote in the European parliament next week on soybean regulations: truly, times are simpler over here.

Yours,

Jon Stone

Europe correspondent