Jacques Delors a fanatic federalist? Up yours…

The central architect of the EU, Delors was a brilliant statesman whose first-hand witnessing of the horrors of the Nazis in Europe led him to work, every day, to ensure the lessons of history were learned and never forgotten, remembers Alastair Campbell

Jacques Delors, president of the European Commission, with Margaret Thatcher in 1986 (AP)

In an era when we perhaps bemoan the lack of politicians with a big vision, and determination to match, sadly we have just lost one.

Jacques Delors, who died in his sleep two years short of reaching 100, was a man with a vision of a Europe that would never again be at war, never again be victim to the hard right, and who saw ever closer union between sovereign nations inside a growing and ever more influential and prosperous EU as the key to turning that into reality.

With a vicious war happening right now on the eastern edge of the EU, with populist and far-right parties on the rise in countries as varied as France and Germany, the Netherlands and even Sweden – and with the UK having entered and now left the EU as part of the populist wave – some might see his vision as having failed. They would be wrong.