Writing more than twenty-five years ago in Hubris: The Tempting of Modern Conservatives, a book I co-edited, the late political theorist Kenneth Minogue asserted that the worst thing about Britain’s membership in the European Union was that it had induced a rhetoric of deception that went far beyond the usual prevarications and half-truths of politics. Minogue, who often appeared in these pages, was not unaware of the other costs of membership, among which he rightly listed the lunacies of the Common Agricultural Policy, limits on trade with countries outside the Union, excessive regulation, and acquiescence to the dangerous folly of seeking to build a European superpower. “These things,” he wrote, “are serious, but not, I think, as serious as the corruption of the political process.”

As Britain heads uncertainly for the exit, it is timely to consider the impact that forty-five years of membership in the European Union have had on British political culture and upon the conduct of politicians. For Minogue was surely correct in supposing that in significant ways British politicians began to behave differently after entry, applying different standards of conduct and acquiring a new political vocabulary that distanced them from the electorate. The most obvious change was the readiness of ministers to cede powers to Brussels as the European project, based on the goal of “ever closer union,” took shape. Political life in Britain during the early part of the twentieth century, as in many other countries, had been characterized by the