Jacques Delors a fanatic federalist? Up yours…

In an era when we perhaps bemoan the lack of politicians with a big vision, and determination to match, sadly we have just lost one.

Jacques Delors, who died in his sleep two years short of reaching 100, was a man with a vision of a Europe that would never again be at war, never again be victim to the hard right, and who saw ever closer union between sovereign nations inside a growing and ever more influential and prosperous EU as the key to turning that into reality.

With a vicious war happening right now on the eastern edge of the EU, with populist and far-right parties on the rise in countries as varied as France and Germany, the Netherlands and even Sweden – and with the UK having entered and now left the EU as part of the populist wave – some might see his vision as having failed. They would be wrong.