EU wheels out its Miss Havisham, dressed all in white and truly deranged

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, began her sixth state of the Union address in Strasbourg by invoking the spirit of Charles Dickens. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” she quoted from the start of A Tale of Two Cities, adding: “If I look at Europe today, I would say the state of our union is the strongest it has ever been. The state of our union can feel as precarious as it has ever been.”