BORIS Johnson’s Telegraph column last Saturday served as a nasty reminder about the motives of those who claim to represent us. Trailed as his “vision for Brexit”, it’s worth remembering that vision isn’t just possessed by forward thinking leaders, great artists and talented sportspeople but also by the religious fanatics and those who have seen a ghost. Johnson’s imaginings were dripping in the ectoplasm of 19th-century British capitalism, when men were men and women and foreigners knew their place.

Johnson makes many mistakes, all day and every day. But here, he joins many others in a real misunderstanding that exists in British politics: Brexiteers see the Brussels elite as heavily indulged weaklings – “wets”, in the Thatcherite imagination – while Remainers see them as principled internationalists, the good guys. These two ideas are designed to sustain two distinct pipedreams: the fantasy of pushing aside the EU and restoring the Anglosphere to world dominance, and the equally unlikely vision of European institutions working for the common good.

Beyond these two views lies the best inside guide to the European establishment, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis. He desperately wants the EU to work – he actively opposed Brexit – but he has seen the inner workings of the system and knows that Brussels is neither soft nor cuddly.

Varoufakis’s recent book, Adults In The Room, recounts his dealings with the inner sanctum of European leaders. As Greek finance minister, he was asked to implement policies that were evidently going to deepen the crisis and worsen any remote prospect of paying back the debt.

He recalls confronting IMF managing director Christine Lagarde about the absurdity of European demands for austerity. “You are right, of course, Yanis,” she told him. “These targets that they insist on can’t work. But, you must understand that we have put too much into this programme. We cannot go back on it. Your credibility depends on accepting and working within this programme.”

The term “Greek tragedy” became a cliché during the post-2008 crisis, but Varoufakis is most fond of Shakespeare references. The bard would certainly have appreciated Lagarde’s commands. Here are powerful people doomed by their previous choices to follow a path they know is cursed.

The tragic absurdity of Greece reveals much about European institutions. Kind-hearted types often imagine Europe as a coalition of small countries keeping France, Britain and Germany in line. Conservatives, symmetrically, argue that “hardworking German taxpayers” bailed out a corrupt Greek state inhabited by Mediterranean layabouts.

Both are wrong. In reality, France and Germany dumped much of the burden of the bailout on to taxpayers from countries like Portugal and Slovakia, who are even poorer than the Greeks. Worse, they weren’t even bailing out the Greeks. The money went straight into the pockets of French and German banks who had made absurd loans to Greece without any proper calculation of risk.

Traditionally, critics have seen Europe’s labyrinthine bureaucracy as a barrier to proper Thatcherite economics. This remains the Brexiteers’ wet fantasy. However, after a slow start, Brussels quickly achieved victories for capitalism that Thatcher could never dream of.

“Socialists, Margaret Thatcher liked to say, are bound to make a mess of finance because at some point they run out of other people’s money,” Varoufakis notes. “How would the Iron Lady have felt if she’d known that her dictum would prove so fitting a description of her own self-proclaimed disciples, the neoliberal apparatchiks managing Greece’s bankruptcy?”

One reason austerity and market economics proves so effective at European level is that Brussels has never felt much need for popular mandate. When referendums reject European proposals, countries are asked, with a polite cough, to vote again. “Brussels is a democracy-free zone,” says Varoufakis. When the Greek people voted against their doom in a popular referendum, the decision was rolled aside. So was Varoufakis. He was an outsider with one failing: he refused to play along with policies that everyone admitted would fail.

Does the above mean Brexit will be easy or even advantageous? Not at all. The European bureaucracy, shielded from any meaningful democracy, are determined to punish Britain. They have done it before, when Greece dared to elect a left-wing government. They are expert spoilers. They are good at it. These people are not “wet”. They are as dry as the driest Thatcherites, and Brussels shields them from the democratic limits of governing a nation state.

Yet, unlike Boris Johnson or Michael Gove, most of these European leaders are not evil individuals. They are often perfectly personable and individually reasonable. This adds another side of theatrical tragedy to this. They are simply carrying out institutional roles, believing they are serving the public good, while knowing that their behaviour will lead to carnage for all sides.

Varoufakis suggests that Theresa May should exit negotiations and instead request “a Norway-style, off-the-shelf arrangement for a period of, say, seven years”. In theory, this would be difficult for Brussels to turn down.

This might be the best deal for everyone, most of all Scotland. It would allow for a future trading relationship with both Britain and the EU. But we have two problems to wrestle with first: the malicious ambition of leaders like Johnson, and the equally malevolent actions of European officials driven by a corrupted sense of liberal virtue.