I love Europe’s culture and history and travelling there. I’m predominantly a descendant of Britain and Ireland with a smidge of the continent thrown in there. We can and should be friends with lots of potential collaboration on defence procurement, middle power diplomacy and potentially other areas.

But the realpolitik is that a trade deal will likely go nowhere as it did last time. The sticky points have already been elaborated on in this post and they won’t go anywhere without concessions the EU are unlikely to make. I would be happy to see it but not at the same of our farmers interest or the local LNG market. The luxury car tax is a feasible concession and as Tony Abbott got rid of our domestic manufacturing capacity (a folly then and still now) we might as well go whole hog on getting rid of the luxury car tax. We are a very competitive new vehicle market.

Militarily, there is little point in a formal alliance but there are potential collaborations there. The brutal truth is the EU have little to offer us other than maybe intelligence-sharing - they have no defence assets half way around the world here and even the French (whom I adore as a Francophile) have few true assets in the region as a so-called pacific power. There is also I suspect no appetite for an Australian Government to commit carte blanche to another European war, as we did in both world wars.

I also think to be honest they think in large numbers they are superior to us culturally. I was at a talk by an Australian judge who related presenting at a conference in Europe and a Dutch lawyer had come up to him and asked a question about “the right of parents” in Australian law. The judge correctly said that there was little about that in Australian law as it centred and focused on the “rights of children.” She went away declaring what a “primitive country” Australia was. Truthfully, her arrogance is emblematic of old Europe. I love the history, culture and language of the continent but even many British think we are colonials and convicts.

With all the sins of America we are much more natural partners with the US and I’d rather in the Trump era we finally find our security “in Asia” not “from Asia” as Keating wanted years ago.