It's just over a week now to 29 March, the day when Brexit was supposed to happen.

Only, it won't happen, or at least we well hope it will not happen. If it does happen, it will be a huge catastrophe which no one can afford, not the Brits, nor the EU.

We have all been following the meanderings of the issue, right from the referendum of years past.

In recent weeks we have with astonishment seen the Brexit is Brexit original date disappear into the fog. We have seen the House of Commons enduring endless votes, traipsing into the Lobbies. Before these votes, we have seen countless debates in the House. And we have come to understand, nay to appreciate, the very real difficulties as explained by the Members: how to keep to the fundamental decision taken by the people in the referendum; but also how to explain to constituents that Brexit will mean a reduction of growth, at least at the beginning, thus making people poorer.

Maybe it is because prime minister Theresa May did not consult widely enough, except her own party and the Brexiteer core in it. Maybe it is because of the many red lines May surrounded herself with.

Whatever the cause, the result has been a tremendous outflow of funds and investment to other jurisdictions, in and out of Europe. There has also been a corresponding outflow of EU citizens who were previously very welcome for their contribution to the growth of the UK economy.

Let us accept that part of this outflow is due to the uncertainty because the final outcome was not (it still is) clear and that after a period of turmoil and uncertainty, things will settle down and new relations created.

The fact remains that the UK did not join the EU (then the EEC) in 1963 with the same frame of mind as other countries had when they joined. Right from the beginning, the UK persisted in the 'Us and them' approach to anything to do with the EU, egged on by a mainly jingoistic and Eurosceptic press, which refused to make common front with the other allies in the union.

At the same time, English became the lingua franca in the EU and Britain, helped by other new entrants, substituted an insistence upon trade for a continental approach to economic fundamentals.

It is now very clear that the basic arguments that pushed the Brexit vote in the referendum were mostly flawed. Not just because of the canard that the money the UK could save from not putting money in the common kitty would be used to bolster the National Health Service.

At the time of the referendum, all the insistence was on pushing out the migrants. But statistically, most migrants were from non-EU origins and they have remained. More importantly, nowadays worry about the foreigners has simply disappeared from people's minds.

People, in this case the British, will have to live with this mess, for a mess it surely is. This is a crisis, perhaps worse than the Suez crisis for the British. It is a crisis self-instigated, self-sought, self-administered.

Europe, on the other hand, flawed and incomplete as it is, will continue to march on. The predictions the euro is doomed, and the EU will soon split up have all proved to be false.