Lack of enemies long enfeebled Europe. There just didn’t seem much need to fight for the cause. When I recently researched the founding of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1957, I was struck that almost nobody opposed it. Here was a centuries-old ideal, a united Europe, which had never previously materialised, yet when a handful of leaders whose countries had just fought each other in a terrible war agreed to it, barely consulting voters, almost everyone said: OK. The US backed the EEC, the UK didn’t join but barely opposed, the Soviets worried more about Nato, and large parliamentary majorities in the six founding countries ratified the EEC’s creation.