Since being elected in 1992 as the Member of Parliament for Rutland and Melton, I had always considered myself to be an instinctive Eurosceptic. I voted ‘No’ in the 1975 referendum, and maintained my belief in the following decades that the EU was undemocratic, inflexible and in need of fundamental reform. As 2016 came around, I still expected to join the Leave campaign, and began discussions to do so. But, as will be seen, I eventually decided against it. With age and experience comes, if not wisdom, greater perspective. Politics cannot always be about indulging one’s natural inclinations.
Like many, I received my share of abuse for backing Remain, but I do not regret it. If anything, events have reinforced me in my belief that I was right to pull back from the brink. Nor do I think I have fundamentally changed my position on Europe. Somewhere along the line from the early 1990s the cause of honest and thoughtful Euroscepticism mutated into a form of simplistic nationalism that strikes me as ugly and demeaning. Rather than devoting their energies to campaigning for the reform of outdated EU institutions and seeking a better deal for the UK, too many Eurosceptics retreated instead to crude sloganeering. There was a rational and pragmatic case to be made for leaving the EU, but few bothered to make it. Instead, we faced a wave of populist nonsense, emotive platitudes and downright lies: a barrage of Farage.
