Europe will become increasingly irrelevant to the global economy as the century progresses, a tragic development which will see one of the world’s great civilisations increasingly marginalised culturally and geopolitically. Those who still believe Britain’s future lies with the European Union are out of date; our future is global or it is nothing. Europe’s slow decline will have downsides, not least the possibility that liberal democracy will lose ground – but that doesn’t make it any less inevitable. The future lies everywhere but the old continent. Whether one likes this or not, it is time to adapt – and that means jettisoning old alliances and failing European bureaucratic structures and embarking on a new, ruthlessly global trading adventure.