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Supporters of the EU can hardly be blamed, in the circumstances, for making change-aversion their key argument. They don't want to get drawn into arguments about democracy, or sovereignty, or the EU's declining share of the world economy, or border control, or Britain's budget contributions. They'd much rather conjure unspecific, inchoate fears about change.

When the EU wanted to extend its jurisdiction into social policy and employment law, it needed the permission of all member states. The UK opposed the move but eventually agreed to allow the others to go ahead, using the institutions of the EU, provided there was a legal guarantee that Britain would not be forced to join in. The moment the ink was dry on that guarantee, the then eleven other states began to agitate to extend their rules to the UK. Because Britain had an opt-out on social and employment policy, they reintroduced the main pillar of that policy - a directive regulating paid holidays, maximum weekly working times and the like - as a 'health and safety' measure (the 1993 Working Time Directive). The Major government protested that the measure was plainly social policy rather than health and safety - it allowed employees to work more than forty-eight hours a week, provided they were given overtime - but the ECJ decided that health and safety didn't just mean being safe at work: it also meant looking after the 'social well-being' of employees.

Taxation is the easiest to quantify. According to the Office for Budgetary Responsibility (OBR), Britain's contribution to the EU in 2016 will be PS19.6 billion gross or PS11.1 billion net.1 Since we are measuring the impact on taxation, it is the gross figure that is relevant here. Sure, some of the money Britain hands over to the EU is returned or spent in this country. But, when measuring tax, we don't deduct notional value. Ask your neighbours how much their council tax bill is. I doubt they'll subtract the value of the bin collection and the street lighting. So what does PS19.6 billion amount to? According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), it is equivalent to the combined revenue of Vehicle Excise (PS5.9 billion), Capital Gains Tax (PS5.4 billion), Air Passenger Duty (PS3.2 billion), Inheritance Tax (PS3.9 billion) and Petroleum Tax (PS1.2 billion). To put it another way, it would allow the entire country to get a 71 per cent rebate in council tax (which raises PS27.6 billion).

Britain was doubly penalized by the Common Agricultural Policy: as a net food importer with an efficient farming sector, she was hit both positively and negatively, paying more in and getting less back. She was, of course, uniquely deleteriously impacted by the Common Fisheries Policy which, for the next thirty years, did not apply to the Mediterranean or the Baltic, but only to the North Sea. It was, in other words, an overtly anti-British policy.

Other Eurosceptic politicians and columnists were also engaged in setting out their agendas. In the end, we agreed on three core aims: the primacy of UK over EU law on our own territory; the right to sign bilateral trade deals with non-EU states, such as Australia and India; and the right to control who can settle in the UK. None of these aims is in any sense immoderate or unreasonable. That they evidently cannot be reconciled with EU membership tells us a great deal about the nature of the EU.

Britain differs cyclically and structurally from other EU economies. Her massive investments in and from the United States make her economy Atlantic rather than European, and her services sector has no equal on the Continent. In addition, as we have seen, she is one of only two member states that trade more outside the EU than inside it, and that disparity is growing.