Six years ago, Sir Mervyn King (now Lord King), who was then the governor of the Bank of England, was in his office, having a conversation with a visitor. Sir Mervyn is normally a mild‑mannered and rather academic man, but he was beginning to get cross. The Frenchman standing in front of him was threatening to restrict the Bank of England’s powers to fix the capital rules for our banks.

According to a report that later appeared in the Financial Times, Sir Mervyn eventually “let fly” at his visitor – a silver-haired man “whose meticulous dress and proud demeanour appeared straight out of Gaullist central casting” – startling the bewildered translator, who was caught in the cross-fire.

Who was this elegant visitor who so infuriated the Governor? One Michel Barnier, the European Union’s internal market commissioner.

That meeting, reported in 2011, is representative of thousands of other meetings that have taken place in Europe over the past four decades. A British business – often one that has been outstandingly successful – finds itself under siege from the bureaucracy of the EU. The vast majority of times that this has happened, we have not heard about it. But look into almost any of our industries and you will find something, somewhere that has been handicapped or damaged by the European Union.