Next month, unless there is a last-minute slip between Brussels cup and British lip, we shall be inundated with detail about what David Cameron has won from the EU. He will claim that his package will create the “reformed Europe” which he seeks. Indeed, he is saying it already, before he has actually got it.

Therefore, he will continue, the British people can confidently vote to remain in the EU. His Cabinet, though technically free to advocate a Leave vote, will all have endorsed his deal in advance, so any referendum rebels will be made to look self-contradictory.

There will be time to analyse the hectares (this is Brussels, so the word “acres” sounds wrong) of small print. Before that happens, I want to stand back and look at the European referendum choice from quite a different point of view. My question is: “Is the EU good for European civilisation?”

Here in Britain, we tend to think of the EU in a “transactional” way. We set off what we get out against what we put in, and calculate the profit and loss. (In literal financial terms, we lose about £10 billion a year.)

On the Continent, this is not how it works, though most member states fight hard for concrete national advantages. For the European elites, the EU is not a transaction, but a journey towards a new state of being. They may disagree strongly about policies, but not about the big idea. It is a case of “My Europe, right or wrong.”

Their beliefs are not economic, but political. Indeed, even the word “political” does not fully express the thought. Their reasons are civilisational. To them, the EU is the solution to Europe’s ancestral hatreds and power struggle, the only viable project for peace across the continent. They also see it as a way of perpetuating European values (behind which the old word “Christendom” still lurks) against tyranny and aggression – for example, Putin’s Russia and growing Islamism.

David Fuller's view

Here is a PDF of Charles Moore’s column.