And the challenge for the Conservatives is to actually fight Blair on the ground that we have traditionally occupied rather than spinning off to the right into the sort of dark twilight zone, no doubt getting huge cheers from the small audience at the party conference but utterly relevant to the rest of the British people.
Another alternative is to let peripheral Europe leave the zone and rebuild it with Denmark and Sweden as a kind of "dark winter night" economic zone, based on sound principles and weak beer.
It's only when you're outside in the dark that you look back and see that the safety zone you always took for granted wasn't a safe zone at all -- just a temporary reprieve from disaster.