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Photo by Matt Dunham/AP

The problem with the European Union is both practical and theoretical. As a practical matter, it is governed by a bureaucracy of Dutch and Belgian scribes and functionaries that is answerable neither to the ludicrous European Parliament in Strasbourg, the ultimate irrelevant talking shop, nor to the principal member states, and is exacting its revenge for centuries of deference to France, Germany and Britain.

The Germans don’t mind the shower of authoritarian directives from Brussels — they are accustomed to regimentation and are the leading power in Europe anyway. The French and Italians don’t mind, because they never pay any attention to what governments say and generally regard government as a bunch of crooks and incompetents and hypocrites anyway (often correctly). The British, however, do like to be law-abiding, and generally do pay some attention to the legislation and edicts of those who rule, and rightly judge Brussels to be insufferable and stifling. The underlying theory of Europe was that a century after the hecatomb of the First World War that engulfed Europe, and many decades after the Europeans gave us the blessings of totalitarian Communism and Naziism, the European powers, from Poland to Iberia and the North Cape to Cyprus, would stand on each other’s heads and regain their status as the centre of the world. The whole idea was unutterable nonsense, and the structure is now crumbling.

The whole idea was unutterable nonsense, and the structure is now crumbling

France has elected a complete outsider as president and the brave new regime has been humbled and defiled by the imperishable Paris mobs, the extras and stagehands at 10 abrupt and profound changes of governmental structure in 230 years, and of countless sporting efforts to get the regimes’ attention with riots and vandalism. The splendid boulevards of Paris have seen it all before many times. Mighty Germany, its governing coalition almost worn threadbare by the imprudent admission of a million desperate Middle Eastern and African refugees, has delivered itself over to energy dependence on the feeble gangster-state of Russia while cutting its NATO contribution to half of what it had promised and complaining of American lack of enthusiasm to continue carrying Germany on its crowded and under-appreciated shoulders. Italy is in more profound political shambles than ever; Spain is distracted by a separatist threat that the central government has bungled (it could have learned from Canada but didn’t).