European politicians bemoan the public’s antipathy to the European Union. But what does the EU represent, and why should we want to engage with it? Once, European thinkers rocked the world by imagining a better future built on the ideals of reason, freedom and democracy. Today, they are less likely to dream of a democratic United States of Europe than to invoke dystopic nightmares about threats to our security. Unable to inspire or lead, the EU’s elites corral us in behind bureaucratic regulations and procedures.

Against critics who denounce its lack of idealism and its bureaucratic practices, believers in the EU have often made a virtue of its humdrum nature. The EU should not be ‘loved’ like a nation, they say; that’s not what it’s for. Instead, European cooperation is simply what it takes to manage a world of growing complexity and problems that don’t stop at national borders. Understood in this way, the EU is a symbol of the post-political consensus: we have gone beyond the era of conflicting ideas to one in which objective expertise is needed to cope with cross-border problems of immigration, globalisation and environmental change. Today’s European thinkers argue that ideology and mass politics are dangerous things of the past.

Recently, this defence of the European Union has taken a battering. The ‘No’ votes to the EU treaty in France and the Netherlands in 2005, and Ireland this year, revealed the gulf that separates Europe’s political class from domestic populations. Some observers have hailed a resurgence of populist politics, as publics across Europe react against the isolation and arrogance of their rulers. The EU elites have responded by trying to dampen debate, despite their ongoing concerns about political apathy. Can a populist backlash against technocratic politics be given a progressive direction, or is it only another negative moment in an already anti-political age?