‘This EU passport is an outrage. I want a British one!’ Not my words, Cydney’s. The spaniel is coming round to my way of thinking on the EU referendum after visiting the vet’s to get the necessary paperwork for her forthcoming trip to the Dordogne — or Dor-DOG-ne, as she prefers to call it.
After spending a small fortune on her bed and board at the dogsitter the last time I went away, I decided she would come on holiday with me this summer.
As soon as I have cast my Leave vote on 23 June, I shall be packing us into the Volvo and heading for the Eurotunnel and a lovely break in a gite in France. If the result of the referendum is that we are to remain in the EU, I shall be doing a spot of house-hunting while I am there too.
What a contradiction that sounds, on the face of it. But really, it makes perfect sense. If Britain is to become a minor outpost of a nation called the United States of Europe, I do not want to live in it. To do so would be to become a shivering denizen of the rainiest, most irrelevant part of the empire, with virtually no say at all in the laws governing me, nor any idea of what the politicians involved in making them are up to.
To wit, if we are to lose all power over our destiny for ever, if we are finally to resign ourselves once and for all to being run by people who have barely heard of themselves, if someone called Federica Mogherini is really going to be in charge of our foreign and security policy, then I wish to be on the move, migrant style.
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