
“This is the first and last election at which the British people will be given the opportunity to decide whether their country is to remain a democratic nation, governed by the will of its own electorate, or whether it will become a province in a new European superstate.”
These are the words of a politician not in 2019, but in 1974. Enoch Powell, then MP for Wolverhampton South West, was the first Conservative to preach the gospel of Euroscepticism. Infamous for his “Rivers of Blood” six years earlier, he was arguably also the first politician to elide the issues of European trade and immigration.