What other challenges do we face? The apocalyptic hysteria about man-made climate change will inevitably subside as the long-postponed debate opens up. The climate of opinion is changing faster than the climate of the Earth. The developing nations do not take kindly to the Marie-Antoinettes of the West telling them to use less carbon. By 2020, the predictions that underpin the expensive measures of dubious efficacy now fashionable may well have been superseded. But the poor will still be with us. 

So will the difficulties of adapting to a mobile world in which, as one region becomes less hospitable, whether for political, economic or environmental reasons, people move to another that is more so. Global migration is a far more immediate issue for most people and governments than global warming.

This month, Douglas Murray reports from Brussels, quoting Eliot (whose letters are reviewed for us by John Gross). But as the new Europe emerges, Yeats also comes to mind: "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last/slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" The next decade will be make-or-break for the EU. For this political dinosaur to avoid extinction, it has to prove that it can compete with leaner, nimbler rivals. It will have to stop treating any manifestation of public opinion (such as a treaty referendum) as an existential threat. As the Eurosceptic Czech President Vaclav Klaus told jeering MEPs, treating the European status quo as a dogma that cannot be questioned "is in direct contradiction not only with rational thinking but also with the whole 2,000-year history of European civilisation". That Judaeo-Christian fusion of faith and reason we call Western civilisation, much of which has its origins in Europe, will outlive us all — but only if we are prepared to defend it.