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THE SUN SAYS

Curtain-haired slimeball Guy Verhofstadt proves he’s the most repugnant figure in Brussels

Even the drunk Juncker cannot match the Belgian’s blabbermouthed arrogance

NO more repugnant figure struts the ­corridors of Brussels than the curtain-haired slimeball Guy Verhofstadt.

Try as they might, even the drunk Juncker or the peacock Barnier cannot match the Belgian’s detestable blabbermouthed arrogance.

 Curtain-haired Guy Verhofstadt is the most repugnant of them all
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Curtain-haired Guy Verhofstadt is the most repugnant of them allCredit: AP:Associated Press

And his top aide plainly shares his superiority complex. “I’m most proud of you when you take on a Tory and win,” coos Edel Rettman Crosse sycophantically to her ageing boss. “You should shoe the f***ers out.”

“That’s the game,” replies Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s Brexit chief.

So it wasn’t just Britain they set out to humiliate. It was Tories specifically.

Indeed the new fly-on-the-wall EU documentary is a revealing portrait of the pompous, sneering, undemocratic bureaucrats 17.4million of us voted to leave: mocking Brexit, our country, even our “war spirit”. That’s right, the war spirit that served us well as we helped to liberate Europe from Nazi tyranny.

But for an insight into Verhofstadt’s blinkered stupidity look no further than a remark he made only yesterday.

Turkey, he said, was “drifting towards dictatorship” as its president orders the re-run of an election he lost.

Precisely as Brussels does with its own defeats and is desperate to do with Brexit.

EU chief Brexit negotiator caught calling PM 'insane' in BBC Brexit doc

You May go

WHAT is going through Theresa May’s mind? She cannot rescue this.

Brexit deadlines come and go. More are set. Empty promises are made. They’ll be broken too.

 What is going on through Theresa May’s mind?
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What is going on through Theresa May’s mind?Credit: AP:Associated Press

Her party and country are baying for her to step down. Her aides threaten legal action against her own MPs — as she tries to stitch up a deal with Corbyn neither his party nor hers will back.

This utter shambles would be catastrophic enough for the Government without Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. But, as predicted, he is hoovering up Tory voters, members and maybe donors.

This existential threat can only be fought under a new leader. Those closest to the PM should talk sense to her.

Web defeat

WE reluctantly accept, as the Government has, that our High Streets need to be ­reinvented in the online shopping era.

Communities Secretary James Brokenshire rightly says we cannot “turn the clock back”.

 A boarded up BHS store on the high street in Crewe, Cheshire
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A boarded up BHS store on the high street in Crewe, CheshireCredit: Alamy

Many stores cannot compete with the convenience and lower cost of buying on the web. If that means town and city centres becoming a mass of restaurants, hairdressers and nail bars combined with welcome new housing, well, so be it.

But it’s rich for a Government to throw up its hands. It’s politicians, via obscene business rates and parking charges, who helped wreck stores’ ability to compete.

How can ANY High Street business survive those?

​Retail mogul ​Mike Ashley gives evidence before the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee on high streets and town centres
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