The head of the European council, Donald Tusk, has condemned Jeremy Hunt’s “unwise and insulting” comparison of the EU to the Soviet Union, as he piled pressure on the British government to compromise for a Brexit deal.

Tusk also implicitly criticised Theresa May, after the British prime minister accused the EU of not showing her enough respect. “Emotional arguments that stress the issue of dignity sound attractive but they do not facilitate agreement,” he said.

But he saved his most withering words for the foreign secretary, who likened the UK to a prisoner trying to escape the EU. “Comparing the European Union to the Soviet Union is as unwise as it is insulting,” Tusk said. “The Soviet Union was about prisons and gulags, violence, against citizens and neighbours; the European Union is about freedom and human rights, prosperity and peace, life without fear.” “As the president of the European council and someone who spent half of my life in the Soviet bloc I know what I am talking about.”(theguardian)…[+]