When the eurozone goes, it will go suddenly. One moment it will be there, and then it will have vanished into the historical annals of catastrophic human vanity projects that disappeared.

Gordon Brown, who claimed to have “saved the world”, was partly instrumental in all this. He it was who transferred the massive private debts of the ailing banks onto the public balance sheet, thereby creating the current crisis: Sovereign Debt.

The world followed the sorcerer’s apprentice into universal contagion. Brown made his claim for glory, now he must bear the approbrium of putting the world’s financial systems at deadly risk.

Europe is the epicentre of the new Armageddon, and the euro currency is its central cause. Britain did well to stay out of it, but, as an EU member, we are still trailing in the wake of this approaching cataclysm, subject to bigoted laws and restrictions from Brussels.

To make matters worse, regulators are depressing the money supply right around the world by their insistence on higher capital ratios in the banking sector.

Moreover, Britain is being contaminated from the Continent in ways that are not being explained to the general population unless they read the FT or the business section of other newspapers, notably, the Telegraph. We are in the eye of a storm, and it’s relatively calm … for the moment.

If Greece, Spain, or Portugal collapse, banks across the European Union will be left holding almost worthless sovereign bonds. It will be the end of the road if trillions of sovereign debt is written off, or “restructured” in the jargon. Major banks and corporations will fail.

Such contagion would leave governments helpless to respond. Theoretically, the IMF would be bust. The US Senate has already made its position clear by 94 votes to 0 — no more American dollars.

Almost the minimum that can happen now is an awesome deflation across Europe and America — already the US money supply is shrinking at an alarming 10% on an annualized basis. A double-dip recession is at the benign end of the spectrum.

The worst case scenario is that a worldwide contagion begins on the European continent. August 1914 will have its 21st-century anniversary in four years. And the grandiose political vanity of Continental politicians will be at the heart of it.

This sunny spring could represent a kind of Edwardian glow before the chancellory lights go out once more across Europe.

David Cameron should use his new leverage to negotiate the UK out of the danger zone and back to full independence.

John Evans