The objective correlative of the E.U.

The Towers of Babel

There’s one European Union subsidy that I always encourage constituents to claim. The European Parliament makes grants available for people to come and see its members at work. I suppose the idea is that the encounter might thaw the typical voter’s froideur toward Brussels but, in my experience, the effect is precisely the opposite.

The first thing that strikes the visitor is the monstrous scale. The European Parliament building in Brussels is vast, running the length of several blocks. During my first six months as an MEP, I was forever turning up late to meetings because a part of my brain simply could not accept that it might take fifteen minutes to walk somewhere under the...