In Britain, the wisdom of the country’s 2016 decision to leave the EU is still hotly debated. Remainers point to reports that Brexit has had a negative effect on the economy. Brexiteers counter that a growing number of economists believe Brexit has had little or no effect on growth, and that it will take another decade to understand the true costs and benefits of the decision to leave the Union. The prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, inveighed passionately against Brexit following the referendum, but since Labour’s election win last year, he has repeatedly stated that he will not reverse the decision, and has even argued that it may yet yield advantages.

None of this has blunted the eurosceptic beliefs of New Right parties across the European continent, even as their growing support has made them more powerful. Most say they do not intend to follow Britain’s example and leave the EU entirely, not least because ditching the Euro currency and returning to the old system of francs, lire, Deutschmarks etc would bring economic disaster and destroy any ruling party’s chance of being re-elected, possibly for a generation. Instead, as Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde has written, they seek to “reform the EU into a looser, more democratic organisation that returns national sovereignty to member states.”

If the New Right succeeds in this aim, it will pose a greater threat to the Union than the Brexiteers do. Such a development would reduce Brussels to a guardian of the single market, thereby thwarting its founding ambition to create a federal European state. Last August, the former director of the German Max Planck Institute, Wolfgang Streeck, described the EU as “a vast supranational would-be state that had become practically ungovernable due to overextension and the extreme internal heterogeneity.” If the European New Right continues to grow in power and influence, public disenchantment with the EU project might overwhelm and collapse the fragile Union entirely.