Memo to Outers: You Can’t Always Get What You Want

Honesty and consistency; two qualities everyone agrees to value but that are easily jettisoned as soon as maintaining them proves too inconvenient. It turns out they’re not so valuable as all that.

So it is with all things Euro-referendum-related. If we are to believe the rival tribunes competing for your affections later this year, negotiating the terms of a British exit from the European Union will either be a doddle or a disaster, with little room for hope in between those twin imposters. Well, perhaps.

Sometimes, however, it helps to imagine an alternative but comparable scenario in which, as it happens, you may be less invested. Doing so might make some things clear.

Conveniently, we have just such an alternative but comparable example close to hand. As everyone, I think, now recognises the arguments over Britain’s relationship with the EU are strikingly similar to many of the arguments made in recent years about the relationship between Scotland and the UK.