We all knew "the West" was heading for a fall due in large part to the excesses of what passed for a financial industry, but did that fall have to be quite so graceless?  Do people really buy the 'its all the fault of the libruls/Roma/work dodgers routine'? 25% you say?

There is a widespread human preference to live in close proximity with people of your own kind - linguistically, culturally, even occupationally. But blaming your problems on the people who you perceive are not like you is just infantile.  Was that not the kind of naked prejudice and chauvinism the EU was designed to overcome?

So who leads the EU now in moral as well as political terms?  Have we all been cowed by a law of diminishing expectations?

Index of Frank's Diaries