Long life: While I won’t vote for the EU withdrawal, part of me hopes the quitters will win

I sometimes think that, by the time I die, my entire life will have been blighted by sterile, unresolved arguments about Europe. I have to admit that the foundation of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 made little impression on me at the time; but I was only 11 years old, Britain wasn’t involved in it, and I had no idea in any case what it was all about. It was, of course, the precursor to the European Economic Community, created in 1957 by the Treaty of Rome; but by then I was 17 and thought it sounded a very good idea, for its main purpose appeared to be to prevent for ever the recurrence of a European war. Having been lucky as a baby to survive a German bomb attack that blew out the bottom two floors of an apartment block beside St Paul’s Cathedral in which I was sleeping in my parents’ flat on the fourth floor, this seemed like a very good idea, and I reproached my country for its snooty attitude towards such a noble ambition.