An absence of rancour is probably the best description of the outcome of last week’s summit of European Union leaders. Britain’s Tony Blair and France’s Jacques Chirac were polite to each other. Germany’s Gerhard Schröder was mercifully irrelevant. This was not unimportant. While the politicians were shouting, the interests of their voters were ignored.

Still, on a positive note, futile arguments about one-size-fits-all social models seem to have been put to one side. There are still continental grumblings about the social iniquities, alleged and real, of Anglo-Saxon capitalism. But the leaders settled for broad agreement on the obvious.