NORMAN Davies's book Europe: A History is a volume big enough to be mistaken for a land mass in its own right.

Near the start there are a couple of quotations. One is from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a philosopher with the proud distinction of having been wrong about almost everything. In the 1770s, it seems, Rousseau happily announced: "There are no longer Frenchmen, Germans and Spaniards, or even English, but only Europeans." Rousseau was Swiss by birth, a fact that may explain his error. He died just before the French Revolution, and before Napoleon came along. It is also a matter of historical fact that Rousseau never saw an international football match.

Then there was Edmund Burke. He did see the French Revolution coming, and didn't care for it at all. If you believe half of what you read, it turned this Irishman into the father of modern English Conservatism. Yet Burke still wrote: "No European can be a complete exile in any part of Europe."

This is not, you might notice, the view of the modern Tory euro-sceptic. They'll claim Burke at the drop of a treaty obligation, but they lack his sense that, love it or hate it, Europe matters. As for what that hippy Rousseau might have been on about, the sceptics have no idea. The English mistaken for the French? That would be against nature. Rousseau, as I mentioned, was often wrong.

You could prove it tomorrow by holding the referendum sceptical Tories yearn for. The bookies wouldn't bother to take bets. Nor would it matter to the Conservative press that their sacred markets might get the wrong message. Britain would be out of Europe before you could say "gunboats in the Channel".

That fact, above all others, marks sceptics out from every other species of political animal on the European continent. Everyone else is terrified by what might happen to the euro; the sceptics couldn't be happier. If the single currency falls apart, the European Union will follow: fine by them. If the eurozone countries and others instead build their fiscal union despite Britain's veto – and what's to stop them? – we will have no reason to remain as EU members: huzzah. A referendum will follow.

That none of this would spell happy days for the peoples of Europe is not something that detains sceptics. In a profound way, in a psychological way, the world represented by the adjacent land mass has nothing to do with them. They differ from Burke: where Europe is concerned, they are born exiles, detached from any sense of community. Europe is other, alien, them, not us. I wouldn't want to insult these poor foreigners by calling them xenophobes, but it is worth asking what they understand – or fail to understand – in their great passion.

To paraphrase: what's Europe ever done for us? Aside from the decades of peace, obviously, and the trade, naturally, and the slight dent in the insularity of islanders, clearly, and a shared purpose (now and then) over values, certainly. Oh, and the odd bit of culture. In a simple sense, Europe has taken us out of ourselves. But none of it seems to count for much.

That referendum, the one that's coming sooner or later, is the perfect symbol. Why a foregone conclusion? Why does no-one, even among those captivated by Europe's possibilities, think that majority opinion could ever be altered?

Things have changed. Three weeks from now, if anyone notices, there will fall the 39th anniversary of Britain's accession to the European Economic Community. Two years after we joined, Harold Wilson's Labour government kept an election promise and held our one and only referendum on the Europe thing. The question was straightforward: "Do you think the UK should stay in the European Community (Common Market)?" On a 64% turn-out, 67.2% said Yes.

Only Shetland and the Western Isles voted against. Almost all newspapers, certainly all of the largest titles, were in favour. Margaret Thatcher, then the new Tory leader, was a stalwart Yes campaigner. What changed? A few daft, self-serving stories about eurocrats and their regulations? A Conservative press whose default position is a contempt for foreigners? None of that seems adequate. None of it explains why "Europe" is depicted as a kind of conspiracy.

You could take refuge in optimism. You could recall that at the start of the campaign in 1975 opinion polls showed two-thirds of voters in favour of withdrawal. Even if you accept that the Yes lobby out-spent its opponents heavily, the electorate was clearly open to persuasion.

So why does no-one believe that the same thing could happen today? Odd as it sounds in the midst of an economic crisis, it is hard to prove that the European Union has failed. That's why Cameron is in a cleft stick: he knows withdrawal is not in Britain's interests. Net contributor or not, we have done well out of the EU. On a human level, a cultural and personal living, whether expressed in package holidays or relationships, we have done better than we seem to realise.

But that's the point: there is no European dimension, most of the time, to British lives. The idea of a European identity seems, to most, a ludicrous idea. In 39 years we haven't bothered to learn the languages, and are less troubled by that omission with each passing year. We don't translate the books, or listen to the music, or watch the subtitled movies. For the most part, where "Europe" is concerned, we have no idea what's going on.

Instead, the preposterous fiction of a relationship with America is maintained, even when it baffles Americans. By a process liable to be revealed as one of history's scandals, our leaders – irrespective of party – defer to Washington time after time rather than align themselves with the pacific surrender monkeys. Even that hardly explains street-level euroscepticism, not if the public's reactions to American wars have been anything to go by.

If you think of Europe as a great human and cultural edifice, scarred as it has been by tribal conflicts, the nations of the British islands are in with the bricks. We have been European since time immemorial. Yet now, in all things, our reflex – and you can quibble over the pronoun – is first to define our differences, mentally to set ourselves apart.

In the introduction to his big book, Davies writes of the blindly "eurocentric" view of history, and of "civilisation". There are risks in that: European arrogance is an old story. But a Britain that chooses to pull up the drawbridge, to cut itself off, is rejecting a great reservoir of thought, art, history and common humanity. In rejecting the past, it rejects the future. And all because someone dislikes the working time directive?

The euro crisis is another symbol. France, Germany and most of the rest will forge ahead now towards fiscal union. Cameron, serving the City first and last, has put us on the outside while a new federal state is founded; some triumph. Yet that's exactly what eurosceptics, with a majority at their backs, regard as the blessed ideal. It is as though they need something from which to isolate themselves

If that's the case, the Continental nations might be better off without us. As some foreigner will point out, it's our loss, a vast one.

Iain Bell

on the

European project