Now for the British Revolution

You might feel safe reading your Spectator, confident that you will die in a bed, but I can reveal that yet another world war is about to break out across Europe, that genocide is stalking the land, and Islamist terrorists are about to blow up innocents by the trainload.

I know this is going to happen, because Dutch MEPs warned of it in a TV commercial. Archive footage of Jews being herded on to trains, of mass graves from the Srebrenica massacre, and bodies lying on tracks after the 11 March train bombing in Madrid were used to warn the Dutch what would happen again if Europe didn’t get its constitution.

But before you head for the bomb shelter, remember that Euro-enthusiasts are not infallible. They said the countries that joined the euro would boom, but the only thing that has exploded is unemployment. They warned us that the British economy would collapse if we didn’t join the euro. We didn’t, and the British economy is in the best shape ever. So now that the constitution is being killed off, we can probably be sure of peace in our time.

In the real world, the only connection between Hitler and the constitution is the way that referendums are abused to give a veneer of legitimacy to power-grabs. Until now, there has been little pretence that they are genuine consultations; only one answer has been allowed, the one supporting a policy that has already been decided.

The first reaction this time was straight from the old school, with Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU’s current President, insisting that Non really meant Oui, and that countries which voted wrongly would just have to vote again to get the ‘right answer’. But the shock as the European project crashes into the will of the people is so large this time round that few believe it can just sail on as though nothing had happened.

The EU after the French referendum will be very different from the discredited EU before, opening up the opportunity for Britain to save Europe from itself.

A good one. The French have essentially killed off the French model for not being French enough. The rest of Europe may breathe a sigh of relief.

The EU needs an alternative model, and there is only one country in a position to offer it.

Chirac knows that, which is why he was sputtering against the "Anglo-Saxon" model that was inadequate to his countrymen's liking (and their votes). The key is a loose federal structure that allows for a maximum of decentralized decision-making. That is very much against the French (and German) intellectual tradition, is theoretically wasteful, inefficient, and has only a track record of unbroken success to argue for it.

The polls have shown the size of the gulf that exists between the societies that France, which almost uniquely failed to learn anything from the collapse of communism, and many other European countries want.

Certainly the ones that actually experienced communism do so. Why they would exchange one centralized economy, monolithic government, and death by regulation for another is quite beyond me. Will the Poles, Hungarians, and Czechs prefer the British model or the French? Ask a few. It isn't anonymous but it's pretty categorical.

If the French want to have high social protection, high taxes and fines for people working too hard, let them — but let the British work as long as they want. Let France set up a low growth and high unemployment ‘inner core’, although I expect they will be lonely. Let them learn from their mistakes, rather than impose them on others. In contrast, the more decentralising, more democratic, liberal, outward-looking British vision would be far more attractive, with support not just from across ‘new Europe’, but from Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, many of the Dutch and others.

Precisely. If, as I suspect, the preference of the Europeans at large runs in this direction, then the constitution must be made to reflect it. A constitution that attempts to force its own model on a refractory people is doomed to failure.

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