Europe stares into the abyss

I started to learn about this as I attended a fascinating afternoon of discussion yesterday at the European Council on Foreign Relations held jointly with Charles Grant's Centre for European Reform. It made the debates over the Labour leadership and the UK budget seem childish. In the first session Paddy Ashdown lambasted the fashionable hostility to the EU. "Either deepen of die" was his warning. It seems his party's Conservative coalition partners can't see what the fuss is about.