At the end of that great film "The Bridge on the River Kwai" the senior British officer stands over the body of the Colonel, while the bridge and the train are destroyed, and can only find the strength to repeat "Madness, Madness" and surely this must be the reaction of anyone who contemplates the train wreck taking place in Europe today. No intelligent person living in the immediate post war period, except the truly prescient such as George Orwell, would have believed that, after the follies of the thirties had been atoned for by the immense sacrifices of the forties, a few generations later the politicians of Europe would have led the continent back to the edge of the precipice. Karl Marx said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce, but what we now face is more likely to be as tragic as it was the first time, while the philosopher George Santayana's famous statement that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it becomes more apposite every day.

The deliberate lack of democracy, which has been a feature of the European project, since it was conceived by Monnet and Schuman, has led to those who constitute the political elites becoming more and more divorced from the desires of the general population, while the insanity of the introduction of the common currency is destroying the economies of most of southern Europe and extinguishing the hopes of vast numbers of young Europeans, who face only massive levels of unemployment, without any prospect that the situation will ever improve. That the leaders of the EU have no respect for democracy is proved by their reaction to the results of referenda that go against their wishes, insisting that the vote be repeated until they get the answer they want while, if a nation refuses to follow the economic plans of Brussels, they just replace the leader by one of their people, as happened in Italy.

Naturally this utter stupidity and selfishness on the part of the politicians is leading electorates to turn in despair to those who offer them a way out but, for many nations, this is the path back to the domination of the extremists who ran so much of Europe before the Second World War. In the UK were are fortunate that we have an alternative to those who are taking us down the path to destruction in that UKIP is a democratic movement, offering sensible solutions and a genuinely prosperous future. without sacrificing the decent, tolerant society we have spent so many generations building. However, much of the continent has not shared that experience, suffering decades of oppression under the extremes of the right or the left, and the lack of deep democratic roots is now providing an opportunity for the same dark forces to gather once again.

Wherever we look in Europe we see an increase in support for parties which do not share our democratic values and who are able to use the devastation wrought by the existence of the EU to move inexorably towards power. Obviously there are some which are similar to UKIP, in that they wish to end the whole insane project by returning to a continent of democratic nation states but there are many others whose agendas are almost indistinguishable from those of the enemies we defeated seventy years ago. Who, a couple of decades ago, would have believed that the Jewish people, after all they suffered during the twentieth century, would once more be seeing themselves put under threat by the sort of anti Semitic attacks which led to the holocaust? Are we really going to see a rerun of that terrible crime?

In foreign affairs the overweening ambitions of the European political class have led to them meddling in the affairs of other nations, first provoking conflict in the Balkans and now, and much more worrying, attempting to draw the Ukraine into their empire, thus causing Russia to react in a way which, while completely understandable, given their history of suffering encirclement and attacks from the West and East, makes possible the frightening prospect of a war between them and us, one which could only end in the utter destruction of both.

So, even if we ignore the detrimental effects that the lesser failings of the EU, such as the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fishing Policy, are having on the UK what do we see as we look out over the darkening scene?

A continent where democracy is dying, national economies are being undermined, a revival of fascism is taking place and the peace of the world is endangered. All this due to the organisation which idiots like Heath, Major and Blair told us was so good for us and of which Cameron, Clegg and Miliband are desperate we should remain members. To quote George Santayana once again, the definition of fanaticism is redoubling your effort after you've forgotten your aim, and who can doubt that this is true of those who cling to a belief in the totally bankrupt concept of a single European state.

The UK electorate have probably one last chance, by voting UKIP at the general election and by voting for withdrawal from the EU in any referendum, to make a stand and turn back this tide of madness, as once we turned back the lunatics of the thirties. Every decent person must pray they take it, otherwise we shall all go down into the dark.