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When Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols sang “there is no future in England’s dreaming”, it is difficult to say whether this punk rock star, with his green mohican and bad teeth, meant to cast himself in the grand tradition of British constitutional history. However, regardless of intent, Rotten was commenting on the paradox central to Britain’s relationship with the past. In the UK’s great constitutional documents, stretching back to the Magna Carta in 1215, no new rights were ever conferred. For example, the Bill of Rights justifies itself as the “true, ancient, and indubitable rights of the kingdom”. These “ancient” rights were presented as being Anglo-Saxon in origin, preceding the Norman invasion of 1066. In essence, every constitutional “progression” is a step backwards - towards the pre-feudal, law-abiding constitution that preserved liberty - to a time before the Normans destroyed English freedom by force.

This paradox at the heart of progress - to go forward, we must go backwards - can also be identified in Chinese intellectual and political culture. This could shape East-West relations over the next century. When asked by a disciple how to govern a state, Confucius instructed him to “follow the calendar of the Xia dynasty, ride in the carriage of the Shang, wear the ceremonial cap of the Zhou, and as for music, embrace the music of the Shao and Wu”. In this seemingly arbitrary use of the past as a guide to future conduct, Confucius - whose influence on political thought in modern China needs no introduction - was advocating an appreciation for the singularity of national characteristics, and warning against prostrating before the altar of reason at the expense of native customs. Like the UK, China does not see history as a nightmare from which we must escape, but a dream we must carefully analyse.

This is in stark contrast with the political philosophy underpinning the European Union. Like the French and Russian Revolutions, the EU is a project based on the Enlightenment’s idea of rationalism. They claimed that the past was a terror from which we must awake - and reason was here to rouse us. Irrational concepts like religion or the nation were responsible for the same mistakes having been repeated in history. What was needed was a radical overhaul of society in which traditional values were abandoned in favour of that most rational of concepts - liberty (whatever that means). Once reason was followed, and liberty pursued, what Kant called ‘perpetual peace’ would arise. 250 years later, his ius cosmopoliticum would be followed almost to the book, coming to fruition as the European Union.

Like Marx and his International Socialism, EU federalists insist - no less virulently - that their centrist dogma of economic and political liberalisation will ‘solve the riddle of history’. Indeed, top EU figures have referred to 1945 as ‘year zero’. It is true that a remarkably low level of warfare has occurred on the continent since the Second World War. But it is blind idealism to claim that this is because of political union - greater prosperity is probably more responsible. (In any case, the EU was powerless in Bosnia.) The EU’s umbrella-style approach to policymaking gives no account for the clashes of interest between different groups. This has caused tensions in Hungary, and significantly, Italy - which may yet be the EU’s undoing. These two crises are down to its stance on immigration, which has exposed its refusal to engage with any anxieties that deviate from its hyper-rationalistic, scientifically objective, universal principles. We are far more different than the latter-day Enlightenment thinkers of the EU believe. Conflict is endemic; the complexities of history have touched each of us, shaping our desires and prejudices differently. Do Ireland and Bulgaria really have that much in common? If not, why should the same policies be forced upon its citizens? The EU’s hyper-rationalism is utopian because it is impossible.

In 1963, Hugh Gaitskell explained his opposition to joining what would later be known as the European Union (then just a common market) by warning of the end of ‘1000 years of history’. Speaking as leader of the Labour Party, he was implying that since the UK had never really been a part of what EU federalists ominously call ‘the community of fate’ - that Carolingian, Napoleonic struggle for mastery on the continent - it would be anachronistic to join a union which would later enshrine the objective of ‘ever-closer union’ in its constitution. Indeed, in 2013 the UK came bottom of an EU Commission survey asking to what extent its citizens agreed with the statement “you are a citizen of the EU”. I know people to whom that would be an accusation. The UK shares with Europe neither the ‘community of fate’ upon which the EU was founded - nor the rationalistic tradition.