It’s interesting what happens on your first day as Foreign Minister. Helpful officials flutter around you like butterflies. One produces a secret red file marked “How to be a Foreign Minister”. Inside are papers on the do’s and don’ts of office. But decades of bureaucratic experience are best summed up in the immortal lines of Yes, Prime Minister: “Once you start interfering in the internal squabbles of other countries, you’re on a very slippery slope. Even the Foreign Secretary has grasped that!”

It is in that fine spirit that I mean to interfere recklessly in the UK’s internal affairs. I want to offer some thoughts on a subject of considerable British sensitivity: EU membership. And I want to try to change some minds.

Let