One of the few points in this fog on which he was explicit was that the EU must now use its common foreign policy to extend its “power and influence in the world”. But we currently see a perfect demonstration of what this means in practice in the shambles it has brought about through extending its “soft power” into Russia’s backyard, by provocatively moving to absorb Ukraine as yet another member. This has been as telling an illustration of how the EU’s make-believe must eventually hit reality as that other monument to Mr Barroso’s years in office, the chaos created by the euro. We thus float on into the fog, the only obvious immediate casualty being Mr Cameron’s dream of leading a victorious “Yes” campaign to keep Britain as part of what Mrs Thatcher described in her last years as “perhaps the greatest folly of the modern era”. And Britain’s decision to join it, she said, will one day be looked back on as “a political error of the first magnitude”.