FRANKLY it’s been rubbish to be a pro-European in recent years. Everyone needs to think that they are fighting for something important, but we champions of the continental ideal have, for some time now, had the worst of slogans, the most uninspired of leadership and the most tedious of quests. It’s like a boring knightly adventure through the countryside (say) of Belgium, by scooter, which terminates in a lengthy attempt to rescue a damsel who is old, unattractive and largely unintelligible. The only reason you do it is because you really think you ought to. It’s no fun, and very few people want to go with you.

Once it was different. Previous European chevaliers fought for the Princess of Peace. Later they burnished their armour in the service of the less romantic but rather more ample Lady of Prosperity. But by the time people like me came along, the thinning expeditions in rusty breastplates were making for Castle Stability, on the uninteresting basis that we had to be in there, lest we be left behind. Ours was the land of headphones, directorates and bossy Luxembourgers.

No wonder that, in Britain at least, the sceps possessed all the passion. Conjuring dragons from the shadows of gerbils, their fury mounted as our enthusiasm waned. We had a constitution to defend that looked and sounded like an explosion in a Soviet economic ministry, but for them the issue was nothing less than survival. “It doesn’t amount to anything,” we’d say. And they’d reply: “The very future of Britain as a sovereign nation is threatened. Aux armes!” It is the essentially tragic figure of Jacques Chirac — now fulfilling his blind historic destiny as assassin of all his own hopes — who has changed things, possibly for ever. He has freed us from the fatalistic belief that Europe is about nit-picking over the exact size of the intolerable subsidy given to uneconomic agriculture, and instead ensured that it is a place of contention about the biggest and most fundamental questions. He has demanded of us: “Don’t you want a Europe that is like France, rather than like Britain?” And our answer is a resounding “Non!” Now not even the fabled, once-invincible alliance of France and Germany can coerce us back into the fold. Their leaders are too weak, their polity is too feeble. As Tony Blair put it at the weekend: “I’m not prepared to have someone tell me there is only one view of what Europe is . . . Europe isn’t owned by any of them; Europe is owned by all of us.” The flashing eye! The flushed cheek!

So all of a sudden we can say what we want to say. If peasant agriculture is la vraie France why should we subsidise it at ruinous cost when our own industries such as coal-mining, surely la vraie Bretagne, all had to go to the wall? And doesn’t the EU in its language and practices ape those of the patrician political classes of France and Benelux, rather than the more demotic approach of Britain and the new accession states? Do we really want a Europe that sees itself as a “political counterweight” to America, chiefly by virtue of its willingness to do business with unpleasant regimes?

It has been an education to listen to members of the political establishment in France and Germany blaming the failure of the constitution on the “Anglo-Saxons”. This is particularly rich coming from the Left and Centre Left in those countries — political forces whose narrow-mindedness and lack of political courage is largely responsible for the current crisis. It was the French Left, sniffy with the socialist candidate, Lionel Jospin, who split the vote in the last presidential elections, ensuring that the result was a victory for the discredited Chirac over the neo-Fascist Le Pen. Oh, bravo! What can you say about a supposedly progressive tendency that has as one of its great heroes a protectionist cheese-maker and the last sensible man on Earth who believes that Roquefort is better for you nutritionally than Paraquat?

And it was the German Left that opposed Gerhard Schröder’s attempts to reform the German economy and the German welfare system, weakening him and ensuring that when the axe falls, it will be wielded by the German Right under Angela Merkel.

When the constitution was run out of France, a crisis was inevitable. The manner of it, however, was not. Britain would still have wanted a new dispensation, but would have gone about arguing for it quietly, possibly over-impressed by the suggestion that too open an advocacy was as likely to offend as to convince. M Chirac and Herr Schröder put an end to this possibility. Their great counter-productive achievement has been to force the hands of those leaders who want something different.

All of a sudden Mr Blair, assaulted over a rebate he couldn’t possibly give up, had nothing to lose. Now, abruptly, we do have a Quest, a princess worth rescuing. And, before I describe her, I have to admit to disconcerting feelings in my European areas: a tingling, a slight but noticeable excitement. There is now a vision of Europe that I feel like getting out of bed for.

It is the wider, extended, democratic Europe that I’m falling in love with. It is an entity constructed to enable the peoples of Europe to compete with the massive economies of the US, China and (soon) India. It is committed to spreading liberal democracy, in partnership with others.

It is not characterised by possessing a core elite of countries and relegating the others to supporting roles. It is strategic in attitude, and open in administration. It is a Europe which can embrace the Balkan countries and, above all, Turkey, that essential, indispensable bridge between “us” and “them”.

I hear a polite coughing at the back. Excuse me, says the first voice, but haven’t we been here before? I seem to remember (it continues) that “wider and shallower” was precisely the position of John Major and (it then demands) where were you then, eh? Shouting that we should enter the euro, abandon the veto, and do just about anything that the French wanted us to do, that’s what. Bloody Johnny-come-lately.

That voice has it partly right. But the problem was that in the hands of the Conservative Party the Euro- debate was only a defensive battle about sovereignty. They, the mad bureaucrats of Brussels, wanted us to give it up and we didn’t want to. That was the limit of the vision. Which was why it was superseded by late-period Thatcherism with its attendant laments and Lamonts, by the Bruges Group and the UK Independence Party, by Robert Kilroy-Silk and the proffered chimerical hell of a castrated Britain awash with Rom anian Gypsies.

And voice two? That points out that 85,000 Italians reportedly turned out at the weekend to listen to Umberto Bossi, of the Northern League, demand the return of the lira and the Polish plumbers. What makes me think that the extended, immigrant-rich, hypercompetitive Europe of my dreams is going to garner mass support? Well, it couldn’t do any worse than the old vision, could it? Among all the many voters saying “yes” or “no” in the recent referendums, who can say that there wouldn’t be a majority for this different Europe? Especially now that it can be argued for with real passion. Bring it on.

Times Recommends

• Obama is giving his party whiplash
• Mamma Mia, how can we resist them?
• This loyal soldier deserves promotion