As a new father in desperate need of space for baby paraphernalia, I recently put nearly all my political memorabilia into storage. Sifting through 25 years of campaigning ephemera, which some would unkindly describe as junk, put the long journey to Brexit into perspective.

As well as the broken ceiling tile that Dominic Cummings, campaign director of Vote Leave, punched on referendum night — definitely not junk — an anonymous storage unit in south London now contains hundreds of Eurosceptic pamphlets and books from the late 1990s to the present day. I have a full set of European Journals, from the days I interned for Sir Bill Cash, which include passionate articles arguing that Britain should have the same relationship with the EU as Norway