Despite the huffing of ideologues, the world has moved on. Voters and businesses are calling for more effective protections

As the sewage-filled waters start to close over the heads of Torydom, their Tufton Street thinktankers carry on like the orchestra on the Titanic. In three grand Westminster houses dwell the TaxPayers’ Alliance, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the anti-migration Migration Watch UK, the climate crisis-denying Global Warming Policy Foundation, the anti-EU European Foundation, the Margaret Thatcher-founded Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) and others, all very opaque about their sources of funding . Now they sink together, still playing the old songs painfully out of tune with the country of which they seem to know nothing.

I went to watch them on Wednesday in one of their lavish salons, as the CPS launched a report calling yet again for more state-shrinking deregulation . I waited until the very end, but no, there was not one line, not one mention in their report of the great regulatory failures of our time. Not a word about Ofwat letting water companies pour sewage into rivers and seas. Nothing about all the other failed regulators – rail, mail, buses, energy, environment, broadcasting and the rest.

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The president is trailing the hard right – and forthcoming European elections could leave him a political lame duck

In the latest of his visionary speeches on the future of Europe, Emmanuel Macron called for the EU to transform itself into a military power or face “death”. Yet his own presidency of France may be about to enter a long twilight zone unless he can reverse his party’s deepening slump in June’s European parliament election.

Macron’s unpopularity is the main reason why his centrist pro-European Renaissance party is trailing a distant second in opinion polls behind Marine Le Pen’s hard-right National Rally (RN). Le Pen’s list is led by Jordan Bardella, 29, the rising star in the populist anti-immigration party. Renaissance, whose list is headed by little-known MEP Valérie Hayer , is down to 17.5% in the latest survey while the RN is on 31%. The two parties were neck-and-neck in the last European election, five years ago .

Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre

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Companies say £145 charge for goods coming to UK via Dover or Channel tunnel will lead to higher prices

Importers of food from the EU into Britain have said that newly introduced post-Brexit checks could increase their costs by up to 60%, pushing up prices for customers and driving some shops out of business.

After five previous delays, the UK government introduced the physical checks on animal and plant products entering from the EU on Tuesday, having revealed at the start of this month that it would be implementing a common user charge (CUC) of up to £145 a consignment.

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Action against Facebook owner comes amid deep concerns about how it is dealing with fake news

• EU to investigate Meta over misinformation before June polls

Fears that Vladimir Putin is trying to fill the European parliament with more pro-Russia MEPs were behind the EU’s blunt message to the Silicon Valley owner of Facebook on Tuesday.

It gave Meta just five days to explain how it will root out fake news, fake websites and stops adverts funded by the Kremlin or face severe measures.

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Commission president, who is seeking another term, took aim at group that includes AfD and National Rally in pre-election debate

The European Commission’s president, Ursula Von der Leyen, has criticised the far-right as “Putin’s proxies”, while refusing to rule out working with other rightwing nationalists, as campaigning began ahead of June’s European elections.

Von der Leyen is seeking a second five-year term leading the commission, in the looming reshuffle of EU top jobs that follows the European elections.

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Ursula von der Leyen takes part alongside representatives from seven other parties as EU gears up for European parliament elections

The far-right Identity and Democracy’s representative, Anders Vistisen , wrote on social media ahead of the debate:

“The entire EU system has tried to prevent me and the right wing from participating in the EU top candidate debate tonight. They want to exclude right wing votes! They didn’t succeed - so tonight I will tell the truth about the EU’s disaster course directly to Ursula and the rest of the EU!”

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Second phase of physical checks could result in price increases in shops, as businesses pass on costs to consumers

After more than three years of delays, Tuesday finally sees the introduction of physical checks on animal and plant imports coming into Britain from the EU.

Importers and trade associations have warned that the new bureaucracy could heap significant costs on to importers, resulting in increases to prices on shop shelves.

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Pedro Sánchez is not alone in EU in facing ‘harassment through the media and the courts’ aimed at forcing him out of politics

Pedro Sánchez may have decided to stay on as Spanish prime minister , but what made him hesitate – “harassment and bullying” of him and his wife by his political opponents – is unlikely to go away anytime soon, in Spain or elsewhere in Europe.

In an ever more polarised political sphere and on a social media battlefield where reality coexists with the wildest fictions, politicians across the continent have to live – or not – with being targets of surreal accusations, “lawfare” and increasingly ugly abuse.

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Starmer wants to make Tory policy on the economy a central theme of its election campaign … without mentioning Brexit

Now, let me get this straight. We have a fissiparous, Brexit-supporting government, many of whose MPs are stepping down, convinced that their party is heading for its wilderness years. Correspondingly, we have a Labour opposition that is riding high in the polls, led by Keir Starmer, who – unlike his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn – played a noble part in the remain campaign and argued passionately for a second referendum .

Proponents of a second referendum hoped that the country would acknowledge its historic mistake, and return to the European Union it should never have left. I was one of them. We failed.

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