The question of whether Britain should be in or out of Europe has produced some “downright surreal” allegiances over the years, says David Runciman in the London Review of Books. Before the 1997 election, The Times had been driven so mad by the Europe question that it refused to endorse a single party and instead supported the most Eurosceptic candidate in each constituency. So in Islington it backed Jeremy Corbyn. When Nigel Farage gave up on the Conservatives at the end of the 1980s, he cast around for a party that sufficiently reflected his opposition to Britain’s membership of the European Economic Community. “He ended up voting for the Greens.”

Farage’s big break in politics came courtesy of none other than Tony Blair. It was Blair’s government that changed the voting system for the European elections to proportional representation, enabling Ukip to claim three seats in the European parliament in 1999. Farage later described that election – and the pulpit it gave him – as the most important moment of his career, “no question about it”. Then there is Michael Gove. In 2016 the then justice secretary was “perhaps the key” to the Leave campaign, because if he hadn’t taken the plunge then Boris Johnson probably wouldn’t have followed suit. Yet it almost didn’t happen. When Gove went to inform David Cameron and George Osborne of his decision, he thought they’d tell him he could remain in cabinet only if he agreed not to campaign – and he’d decided he would “keep his mouth shut” in order to hold on to his job. “But the choice was never put to him.” Instead, Cameron and Osborne expressed their “patrician displeasure at his disloyalty” – like schoolteachers disappointed with a once-favoured pupil – and “sent him on his way”.

Between the Waves: The Hidden History of a Very British Revolution, 1945-2016 by Tom McTague is available to buy here.

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