It may have been strictly true that we were not entering a federal Europe, but it left a largely disinterested electorate with the impression that we were entering a Market and not a political arrangement. That was clearly its purpose, but it had two unfortunate effects which are with us to this day: in the first place it created the impression that our leaders had been economical with the actualité; and in the second, it left economics as the only reason to be in Europe. And so, as the economic gains failed to materialise in abundance (except in Scotland and Wales) it left that same English electorate wondering what the point of the whole thing had been. It hence became perilously easy to argue that the English were paying a huge price to be governed by a Franco-German axis.