This isn’t a European country, but our politicians are desperate to make it one

has a reputation for being a lowish tax country, more like America than France. And yet our tax-to-GDP ratio is in the middle of the European pack – lower, yes, than Germany but higher than Ireland, Spain and much of Eastern Europe. In transport, I would not be surprised to see a gilets-jaunesstyle revolt against command-andcontrol road management (in France, these activists have reportedly destroyed half of all speed cameras).

In housing, the disastrous failure to build more homes has left the UK with some of the lowest rates of home ownership in Europe. If you really want to see a property-owning democracy, head east. In parts of the former eastern bloc, 80-90 per cent of people own homes without a mortgage, a legacy of postcommunism privatisations. Devastatingly, on that particular measure, we rank alongside the renting-obsessed Germans, although more Britons own homes mortgaged.

The point is that all of the above cannot fail to have an impact on our culture. Can we really have a modern equivalent of the old, patriotic English yeoman class if the stability of property ownership is out of reach for millions, and taxation penalises those of independent means? Are we actually a buccaneering nation of risk-takers when regulation is seen as the solution to every social ill? And why are we prioritising the eurovalues of social peace and order over freedom, as most obviously seen in the crusade against free speech?

If our politics become more European – with mob-like “movements”, fragmentation and chaos – blame the politicians. It’s also another reason why Brexit must not end with our exit from the EU.