José Manuel Barroso, the former prime minister of Portugal and former head of the European Commission, used to say that Europeans were in love with “the intellectual glamour of pessimism”. When I first heard him say that in 2005, I had just started as a correspondent in Brussels after a few years living in the US, and his words rang especially true. There was a stark contrast between the deeply rooted American cultural belief that things could only get better, and the routinely bleak view that prevailed in many European countries, even the wealthiest and most privileged ones. France, Belgium, Spain and Italy consistently rank high in global surveys of pessimism.

Americans have become more pessimistic since then too, especially over partisan divisions. But in Europe negative, defeatist thinking is often thought to be more intellectually credible, regardless of actual events.

Take 2019, which can now, with hindsight, be viewed as a relatively positive year for Europeans: post-financial crisis, pre-pandemic, pre-Ukraine war. In that year, a YouGov global survey showed Europeans were the gloomiest in the developed world.

There are certainly reasons to have been pessimistic in 2023. So far this decade has been full of tragedy, uncertainty, persistent poverty and rising authoritarianism, even in established democracies. Ukraine continues to be assaulted by death and destruction while military and economic support is waning and Vladimir Putin’s aggression seems unrelenting.

The lack of........

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