Accordingly, proponents of continued EU membership have become more worked up about membership of the so-called Single Market, that is the EU’s single regulatory system that allows goods produced anywhere within the Market to be moved about without let or hindrance. The implication seems to be that if a country is not in the Single Market, then it will find it extremely difficult to export to it.

Yet this is palpable nonsense. Countries from all around the world export successfully into the Single Market without being members of it. Their exporters may face some added costs from the need to comply with EU rules and regulations but the huge success of their exports shows that this burden is far from onerous.

Yet, if you belong to the Single Market then you are obliged to accept its rules and regulations for the whole of your economy. About 40pc-45pc of our exports go to the EU. But, for simplicity, let’s assume the figure is 50pc. Since we export about 30pc of our GDP, exports to the EU amount to about 15pc of GDP. It may not have escaped your attention, however, that this implies that 85pc of our economy does not consist of exports to the EU. Yet this overwhelming bulk of the economy still has to comply with all EU regulations. Moreover, this non-EU proportion is rising all the time.

I think that a balanced analysis of the facts supports the conclusion that the UK could do perfectly well outside the Union.

For me, though, the key issue is governance. It has become clear that the EU’s institutions do not work well. Accordingly, they are liable to make very bad decisions.

Our experience of the EU is a strange mixture of the trivial and the disastrous. The trivial includes the forbidding of hairdressers from wearing high heels at work. But the EU has also made bad decisions on four key issues: the operation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) which subsidised inefficient agriculture; the huge expansion of the Union while maintaining free movement of people within it; the Schengen Agreement allowing passport-free travel; and the formation of the euro.

These bad decisions are the inevitable outcome of the combination of its dreamlike vision of the future, its inherently bureaucratic nature, the constant horse-trading between self-interested nation states, and the weakness of the European parliament. The result is a union that is profoundly undemocratic and unresponsive to peoples’ needs, wishes and preferences.

David Fuller's view

Here is a PDF of Roger Bootle's column

Reading also the beginning of Roger Bootle’s column, I wonder how many people of my generation who also voted in favour of the European Community (Common Market) would find anything to disagree with in this article.