Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Does anyone really expect the EU referendum to resolve anything?

After Scotland, does anyone really expect this will answer the Europe question for once and for all?

issue 30 May 2015

I suppose, if you could look deep into the mind of somebody who was passionately keen that Britain should leave the European Union then, in among things like old episodes of Dad’s Army and unassailable convictions that Cornwall produces some perfectly good vintages, and so on, you might also spot a vision of the future.

In this vision, our referendum will have been and gone and Britain will have seen the light and left the EU. Everybody will have been convinced. Even Nick Clegg. The question will have been settled for a generation at least, and there will be no need to talk about it anymore and we’ll be able to get on with doing all the things that those blasted Europeans have been preventing us from doing for the past four decades. Whatever they were.

Likewise, if you peered into the mind of a passionate British advocate of the EU, and you brought along a translator, because they’re obviously dirty polyglots to a man, then you might also find a vision of the future.

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