During a week which should have been celebrated across the continent to mark the sixtieth year of the European project, latecomer Britain is headed towards the exit door unsure why it joined in the first instance.

Britain never bought in to the European project; it has never fully understood its European neighbours. Having resisted joining in the 1950s, Britain’s accession to the then European Economic Community (EC) was blocked twice by then president of France, Charles de Gaulle.

After joining in 1973, it would not be unfair to describe the UK’s attitude during its four decade-long membership as half-hearted. Only Tony Blair as Prime Minister advocated that Britain attempt to play a more central – even potentially leading – role in the European Union.

Was last June’s Brexit vote such a shock?

The country’s most successful party, the Conservatives “banged on” about it (to quote former PM David Cameron) for long enough before holding the referendum. The Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership has been non-committal.

UKIP consistently polled strongly in European Parliament elections in the run up to the vote, topping the poll with ease in 2014.

Britain doesn’t really get Europe, its people’s willingness to share space, politics and governance. More than often the British political class’s understanding of European politics has been all too simplistic. Britons were told that the Euro currency would implode; that Greece would crash out of the Eurozone.

As the conventional wisdom had it, the UK voted for Brexit and Americans elected Donald Trump the domino effect would continue in 2017.

This was supposed to begin in the Netherlands this month with the election of Geert Wilders as Prime Minister, followed by Marine Le Pen as President in France. Germany, too, was to edge towards the Eurosceptic right. Yet the Euro persevered, and it was the UK which found itself leaving the EU.

There was no massive political upheaval in the Netherlands. Geert Wilders was not swept to power on a wave of populist fervour; the truth is that given the nature of the Dutch electoral system such an outcome had always been nigh impossible.

Over 20 parties contested the election; under this, the most proportional electoral system in the world, the winner rarely takes more than 20% of the vote. A coalition was always going to be formed, with Mr Wilders sidelined.

And as for France? Everyone seems to think that Le Pen will win – except Europeans.

Westminster just doesn’t get coalition politics, something which is common across the continent. The Liberal Democrats were nearly wiped out in 2015, after five years of sharing power.

Britain doesn’t want proportional representation either – a referendum on replacing the majoritarian first-past-the-post system with the AV system failed in 2011 by a margin of 67% to 32%.

In the European project’s sixtieth year, the collaborative and consensual brand of politics which it embodies still baffles Anglo-Saxon observers.

Britain never fully felt at home in Europe; its formal withdrawal this week – as its neighbours celebrate their togetherness – represents a final break not just with a particular institutional configuration, but also with a political worldview.