But it is not Trump who is sapping the strength of Europe but our own rulers through their addiction to progressive ideology and bureaucratic control. It is our political class, not the White House, that has shown contempt for our traditional liberties, history and sovereignty.

Indeed, Americans are amazed when they learn that almost 10,000 British people were arrested by the police here in 2024 for comments made on social media.

Complacent European governments, not the Pentagon, or Congress, are to blame for our enfeebled defences. Britain has a bigger military budget than most of our continental partners, but it falls far short of our current needs.

Our army is the smallest it has been since the Napoleonic Wars and is shrinking by 2,000 soldiers a year. Our air force has only a third of the combat aircraft that were in service at the end of the Cold War, while last week the Royal Navy revealed that only half its fleet is operational.

Europe has long focused on priorities other than defence – like featherbedding its peoples with lavish social security. It is a remarkable fact that Europe has just 7% of the world’s population and a quarter of all economic output, yet it accounts for more than half of global expenditure on welfare. This indulgent approach is completely unsustainable, spelling the ruination of both the traditional work ethic and the public finances.

The embrace of such dependency shows how badly Europe has lost its way. For centuries, Britain and the continent led advances in commerce, the arts, democracy and technology, but tragically that spirit of dynamic creativity seems to be evaporating.

In both Labour’s Britain and the EU, regulation is valued more than innovation, taxation more than wealth creation. It’s no wonder that the economies here are so sluggish.

But there is another factor at work, which helps to explain the disappearance of national patriotism across Europe. I am referring to the triumph of fashionable woke dogma, which has wreaked such havoc on so many fronts. So in Britain households and businesses face the highest energy prices in the world thanks to Ed Miliband’s neurotic fixation with reaching the target of net zero carbon emissions, just as the EU wants to destroy the concept of national identities in order to promote federal integration.

And our Europhile Prime Minister seems only too keen to drag us back into orbit of the Brussels empire, starting with a deal on free movement for young people to be followed by membership of a customs union. Our independence will soon be hanging in the balance once more

The official doctrine of inclusion often encourages citizens to feel shame rather than pride in their nation’s past. But when it comes to destroying nationhood, an even larger wrecking ball is in operation: that of mass immigration.

Far from wanting to “celebrate diversity” as many politicians urge, much of the public feels only despair at this revolution, which has brought so many problems in its wake, including gangland crime, terror threats, violent misogyny, crumbling social cohesion and a huge burden on the public infrastructure.

Europe’s leaders sometimes indulge in tough language about border reform, as they did at this week’s summit in Strasbourg, but their rhetoric is empty. They are too cowardly, too attached to their favourite doctrine of diversity for any real action. The demise of countries’ national identities will accelerate.