It is a real shame that England is missing from the European elections. It would teach us that for decades now, democracies have been voting on the basis of a ‘no’ vote. The yes doesn’t make it. They have an accessory function.

It is a fact that governments change, majorities are nullified, but electoral campaigns are exalted in denial, and Clement Attlee is the forerunner of all government “nos”. On the eve of the negotiations to divide up the world after the Second World War, the Labour leader replaced Churchill who, more than any other Western leader besides De Gaulle, had won the Second World War morally for the West. Moral merits did not prevent him from losing the empire that was ceded to Washington – the African colonies, the Asian colonies had only long since been liberated.

And it was an Englishman, Lord Keynes, who sanctioned the advent of His Majesty the Dollar and the decline of the pound as a handmaid in the secret suites of Bretton Woods. The pound was partially redeemed by an adequate development of tax havens. But Stalin’s surprise at the resumption of negotiations for the division of the world, suspended for the elections, when he did not find Winston with a cigar and bowler hat, and sat next to Attlee, of the “never seen before” series, is historic. And it is no coincidence that the historical........

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