The shock waves have yet to reach Beijing. Legions of the best and brightest in China’s foreign policy establishment are doubtless poring over the implications of Ireland’s vote on the Lisbon treaty. But if truth be told, I have yet to detect a ripple on the calm surface of the Chinese capital. Why, after all, should 1bn-plus Chinese be exercised by the rejection by fewer than 1m Irish voters of a document most Europeans do not understand?

To look back at Europe from Asia is to understand its infuriating introspection. The leaders of the European Union have spent the past five years and more arguing about the shape of the institutions in Brussels. The French and Dutch were first to say no. Now the Irish have joined them. During the same period, the US has squandered its global leadership role and the relentless economic advance of Asia’s rising powers has remade the contours of the geopolitical landscape. Does anyone really care about how Europe organises itself?