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Quite appropriately, Anon 14:50 invites us back to the Iron Age in order to justify his faith in the European Idea. If we look to more recent British history, however, we’ll see that it took the peoples of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms the best part of a thousand years to achieve a sense of national unity, despite sharing a common (more or less) language and culture – and even then it was achieved under the external stimulus of foreign oppression. The EU has so far advanced a mere 27 years towards that goal, and yet it’s already hard to say whether “advance” is the right word. I certainly wouldn’t care to bet that the events of the last three years have increased the radical affection of the British people for “Europe”, however much they may have impressed us with the sense of an inescapable Fate.

But what strikes me most about the pro-EU commenters on this site is the way they never under any circumstances feel, or at least confess, the slightest disquiet at those events. Do they truly see no harm in the sustained vociferous campaign by a minority of a minority to undo a democratic verdict on an issue of the utmost constitutional importance which had been deliberately entrusted to the people by an overwhelming vote in parliament? Can they see no possible danger to this country or indeed to Europe (if that’s where their ultimate concern lies) in the triumph of such a campaign? In the first shock of the result, the EU lobby tried to argue that the referendum was only “consultative” but that thin pretence has long since been given up, and they now seem to rest on the simple precepts that might is right and that the end justifies the means. These are strange principles to find espoused, under whatever colours of rhetoric or sophistry, in the official organ of the solicitors’ profession.

We who desire no higher political allegiance than that of our own country don’t whitewash all the policies and deeds of our government. But those, like Anon, who profess their higher loyalty to “Europe” do often seem to regard this as such a sublime sentiment as to lift the object of their affection above all constraints of justice, public morality and good manners. As to Europe having had “its longest period of peace since the EU”, not only is this argument pure post hoc ergo propter hoc (NATO secured peace against Russia, and mutual weakness and external fear have so far secured peace between the former “great powers” of western Europe), but it conveniently overlooks the massive civil war and bloodshed in Yugoslavia 20 years ago, a debacle due in part to the inept and ambitious meddling of “Europe”.