In some ways it is amazing that such a movement has not kicked off in earnest already. All the while public opinion continues to progress ineluctably in one direction. In 2010 the German political class had worried in the loudest way they could about public opinion polls showing 47 per cent of Germans didn’t think Islam belonged in Germany. By 2015 the number of Muslims in Germany had gone up again, but so had the number of people who believed that Islam did not belong there. In 2015 that figure had risen to 60 per cent. By the following year almost two-thirds of Germans said that Islam did not belong in Germany, with only 22 per cent of the population saying the religion was integral to German society.6 In February 2017, after a new American President attempted to pass temporary travel restrictions on citizens from seven unstable Muslim-majority countries, Chatham House released a survey of European opinion. The London think tank had asked 10,000 people across ten European countries whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement, ‘All further migration from mainly Muslim countries should be stopped’. The majority of the public in eight out of the ten countries surveyed – including Germany – agreed with the statement. Britain was one of only two European countries where a desire to halt all further Muslim migration into the country remained a minority opinion. In Britain only 47% of the public agreed with the statement.7

Europeans are left in the position of not believing sufficiently in their own story and being distrustful of their past whilst knowing that there are other stories moving in that they do not want. Everywhere a feeling is growing of all options being closed off. All routes out seem to have been tried before and appear impossible to venture into again. Perhaps the only country in Europe that could lead the continent out of such stagnation would be Germany. Yet even before the last century Europeans had every reason to fear the notion of German leadership. Today, younger Germans tend to fear this even more than their parents. And so the sense of general drift and leaderlessness continues.