In the 1975 referendum the former prime minister Edward Heath, who had taken Britain into the European Economic Community (the EU’s precursor) two years previously, claimed membership would have no effect on British sovereignty. The EEC was purely an economic arrangement, he insisted, and we couldn’t prosper outside it.

I thought these claims ranged from deeply misleading to outright lies. It was the first time I was old enough to vote and I ticked the box to leave. I was dismayed that the British people voted to maintain the anti-democratic status quo.

Now we have reached that point of decision once again. The EU has metastasised into a full-blown superstate project. In the intervening years, the damage it has done to core British industries such