BEFORE ARRIVING in London this morning for his state visit, President Chirac took pains to ridicule Tony Blair’s vision of “building a bridge” between Europe and America.

The obvious reason why the bridge-building turned out to be a delusion was emphasised not only by the French President but also by the Prime Minister’s own European adviser, Sir Stephen Wall. The Bush Administration did not treat Mr Blair as an honest broker, still less an adviser, but as a messenger boy. His job was simply to take decisions made in Washington and convey them to Europe. The Blair “bridge” was largely one way, as Sir Stephen sardonically pointed out.

But beyond the transient politics of personalities, there is a deeper reason why Mr Blair’s bridge-building project was doomed to failure. To stay up, a long bridge must be built on secure foundations at both ends of its span. But the European end of the Blair bridge was built on shifting sand. The day of the French President’s state visit seems an appropriate moment to consider why Britain has never made a commitment to European construction with anything like the enthusiasm of France.

The key is Britain’s refusal to identify itself as a European nation, first and foremost. Nations and federations must rest on a shared sense of identity of some kind. Without one, it is difficult to sustain the sacrifices and compromises inevitably required in a political unit, particularly the elaborate social contract which holds together a political federation. The absence of a strong European identity has long been the fatal flaw of the European project, but over time some sense of identity has grown, first in the small or recently unified countries, such as Belgium and Italy and then in the countries with a troubled history of war and occupation, such as Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain.

But in countries with confident, well-established national identities European federalism has always been hard to sell. In Britain, Denmark and Sweden, the attractions of Europe have always been essentially economic — and as Europe’s economic performance has waned, the political arguments for unification have run into ever greater resistance. But should not this group of naturally Eurosceptic countries include France?

France, as much as Britain, is a stable nation state with a very long and generally successful history, a glorious national culture and a strong tradition of central government. Why, then, do the French seem more willing to subsume their identity within a federal state?

In the early days of the European project there was a trite explanation. The French elite believed that they would end up running Europe and would turn it into an arm of the French State, but with Germany paying the bills. This may once have been a plausible theory, but today it simply does not ring true, especially to the French people, who see their country repeatedly losing battles in Brussels over major economic and political issues. French civil servants no longer dominate life in Brussels as they did until the late 1980s. And the combination of Germany’s post-unification assertiveness with European enlargement essentially rules out any return to the days of French dominance.

Does this mean that the French might eventually turn Eurosceptic like the British? Might the French President and the British Prime Minister find themselves on the same side in the European Council one day? This is very unlikely for at least three reasons, all of which suggest that the gulf between French and British attitudes to Europe will widen rather than narrow in the years ahead.

The deepest reason is history. Since the late 16th century, Britain’s main political and economic interests have been global rather than continental. The slogan that Britain must be “at the heart of Europe” became an obsession, first for John Major and then for Mr Blair. But this is a geographical and historic impossibility. Britain has always been on the periphery of Europe and always will be. A trading nation which has always thrived by exchanging not just goods but also ideas with the whole world, Britain was never going to immerse itself in Europe with the same enthusiasm as France.

The second reason is cultural. Britain has had the good fortune, partly because the Pilgrim Fathers founded the most successful of the American colonies, to be the source of a universal language and culture. The English language has now won unquestioned global dominance. France, by contrast, is the home of a language and culture that came close to global dominance before it was eclipsed by English. Thus for Britons to identify themselves primarily as Europeans would involve a net cultural loss. But for many in France, Europe still looks like a bastion against the hegemony of Anglo-Saxon culture.

Which brings us to the third, and most topical, explanation for the widening rift between British and French attitudes on Europe. The attempt to create a sense of European identity is not necessarily doomed to failure. National identities are created through competition. As long as European civilisation appears to be the only one that matters in the world, our shared culture and history are no more noticeable than the air we breathe. But this could change with the rise of competing civilisations. The clear long-term rivals are China and, less plausibly, Islam. But more significant in the next few years is likely to be the divergence between Europe and the United States.

For many Europeans, America is now an alien, even hostile, civilisation. Especially after George Bush’s re-election, the next phase of European integration may well be driven by opposition to American power. The desire to create a multipolar balance of power, in which Europe acts as a counter-weight to America is indeed Jacques Chirac’s most explicit diplomatic goal. Constraining America is an objective which many people in Britain would strongly support. But Tony Blair is definitely not one of them, which is why the Prime Minister’s transatlantic and European policies have ended building a bridge to nowhere.

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