STAY IN EUROPE

“They have a war chest of one and a half million pounds, which is the biggest war chest that any side had ever had in a British electoral campaign. And it's 10 times as much as the No campaign had. So, I mean, they're able to absolutely obliterate the Leave campaign.”

“And the paradox of this, and I think this is the really interesting thing. The paradox of this is that all the evidence shows that the British people in the 70s were pretty Euro-skeptic. So remember that before we entered, the polls and surveys showed that people were generally against it or indifferent. And after the referendum, polls showed the same thing.”

“Because thanks to Ted Heath having inflated the economy and then the 1973 oil shock, inflation has gone through the roof. It is now hurtling towards 25%. And on top of that, public borrowing is totally and utterly out of control.”

“And it's about the first Brexit referendum in June 1975 when Britain took the fateful decision not to leave what became the EU. And it's about Basil's betnoir, bloody Wilson, and how Harold Wilson struggled to stop Britain plunging into hyperinflation and complete economic meltdown in the course of 1975”

“He says, I'm in favour of Europe in principle, but not in practice. So basically... He says, Ted Heath has got us in on very bad terms. So when I come back as Prime Minister, I will renegotiate the terms and then I'll hold a referendum so that the people can decide.”

“He's fervently anti-European. He sees Europe as a capitalist cartel, and it will make it impossible to build socialism in one country. And the funny thing about writing about Tony Benn, I love writing about him and written about him a lot in my books, is the paradox that his colleagues universally said, he's an extremely nice man.”

“This is precisely the point when inflation is ripping through the British economy, you know, wages are rising at 30% a year. There are all these apocalyptic predictions we're heading into, you know, we're turning into Weimar Germany, we're heading for dictatorship. And most people think, well, against this backdrop, getting out of you. I mean, I don't think they'd have got in in 1975 I think they'd have been more hesitant, they'd have stuck to the status quo.”