The most important reform in the Conservatives' sights, however, is to lead a fundamental philosophical change in Europe. It is to bring about the retreat from bureaucratic centralism that the Laeken Declaration of 2001 was supposed to herald and which the EU Constitution so utterly betrayed. It would take two years of intense diplomatic preparation to have any realistic prospect of summoning an open, democratic European Convention to do what Laeken hinted at and the Philadelphia Convention achieved for America, redefining the union's powers to attune them to 27 countries' popular wills. From this process the single market would presumably survive intact. But foreign and defence policy, criminal law and social policy would probably defy a uniform solution, since the divide is deep between integrationists and those who believe the nation state to be the sole legitimate forum for such questions. This would mean giving substance to "variable geometry", with its opt-ins, "enhanced co--operation" and subsidiarity - that dire jargon, which today is devoid of content but which if brought to life would offer the union a chance of reviving the lost loyalty of Europe's citizens.

There is already one conspicuously successful example of live-and-let-live: the euro. The pros and cons of a single currency do not lend themselves to slick summary, but the economies of Europe's southern belt are patently being damaged, as is Ireland's, by a one-size-fits-all monetary policy, and if Britain had adopted the euro, our property boom and bust would have been even more extreme. In Brussels, opt-outs are regarded as frustrating temporary exceptions to pan--European unity. They should instead be regarded as a model of how Europe could be at ease with itself if only it listened to the people, not the state--builders.

The team the Conservatives need to assemble to think through their European strategy will have to combine battle--hardened Foreign Office hands, well-informed sceptics and single-market experts, chaired by someone who shares the country's settled will for constructive engagement with the EU without avoidable loss of autonomy other than in trade policy. It won't be easy, but such people do exist. The prize is to be at peace, as much with ourselves as with our neighbours.