Lovely piece: Jean Monnet and all the rest are just following in the footsteps of Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Charles V, the Hapsburgs, Napoleon and Hitler. Doomed to failure:
Europe has never tolerated being led. It is a continent of cats, not dogs. Diversity is its glory, cantankerousness its defence. It is not a family or a community but a marketplace, a cultural entrepôt. Those who have sought its unity, even as a political metaphor, have come to grief.
Even EU-philes have taken to describing teh EU as an Empire, and we all know what happens to them.
How come Blair’s fixation with joined-up government then?