One of the most shameful chapters in the history of our involvement in the “European project” was the way, from the moment we first applied to join it in 1961, we treated our fellow members of the Commonwealth. Last Monday I had occasion to recall this when I gave the address at a memorial service for my Aunt Eleanor, who died last month aged nearly 98.

Before retiring in 1978, Eleanor had been the first woman to become deputy head of the Foreign Office news department, winning trust and respect from both her colleagues and the journalists who relied on her. She was also the last surviving member of the Cripps Mission to India in 1946, when no fewer than three Cabinet ministers spent three months in India negotiating arrangements for India’s independence.

By 1961 she was a senior press officer in the Commonwealth Office, when her minister, Duncan Sandys, was sent off round the Commonwealth to give its leaders the startling news that Britain was now planning to throw in its destiny with “Europe”. These were the countries with which we had the closest ties of any in the world, who had only recently rushed to our aid in the Second World War and were our main trading partners.