Kind readers have sprung to the defence of the European Union.

One reader points out that the UK already has negotiated opt-outs from the Euro, and from ‘ever closer union’. And there is currently no chance of unanimity over a European Army. All this is true. But it inevitably raises the further question of why there should be enthusiasm for membership of a body to the aspirations and intended direction of which the UK is declaredly inimical?

Another correspondent claims that the European Union has been the principal guarantor of peace between France and Germany (war between them having been the bane of the twentieth century). Such a view, in the opinion of many, hugely underestimates the role of NATO and the United States, and of the pressure exerted by the Soviet Union in the Cold War.