Yesterday was the centenary of the beginning of the Battle of the Somme in 1916.  One million men were killed in that gruesome battle alone.  One of the principle reasons for the creation of the EU and its predecessors, after all the slaughter, the cruelty and the wasted resources, human and material, in the 20th Century, was to avoid this type of obscenity – ever again.

One hundred years later we are contemplating the weakening,  if not the possible destruction, of the EU, and the distinct possibility of a return to petty competitive nationalism. After 1945 the counterweight of Britain and France to a resurgent Germany was regarded as essential, and this idea was supported by enlightened Germans.  Now Germany will have its little (actually, not so little) commercial empire.  The German pressure to expand eastwards and to include countries like Roumania, Bulgaria, and even Turkey, in the EU is wholly inappropriate and naturally upsets Russia.  No one in Western Europe except some German manufacturers and bankers will benefit. Britain is “absent without leave”.

In short, the British media and the politicians don’t understand what they have done – their attention is fixed on immigration, rules from Brussels, being bossed by foreigners and so on.  The really serious potential problems are waiting, as it were, in the lists, and will be aggravated by movements of populations and climate change.  Instead of facing these challenges together we will be doing so apart. All the product of short- termism, “little Englandism” and little knowledge of history.  Epicurus believed in cooperation and mutual support; so should we.