On 14 January 1963, in a televised press conference, French President Charles de Gaulle delivered his first “non” on the United Kingdom’s application for membership of the then European Economic Community. Apparently unaware of the prescient significance of the distinction, de Gaulle used the words “Great Britain”, “Britain”, “England” and “the English” interchangeably in his remarks, but it was clear who, primarily, he had in mind: “England in effect”, he declared, “is insular, she is maritime.” “One might sometimes have believed”, he continued, “that our English friends, in posing their candidature to the Common Market, were agreeing to transform themselves to the point of applying all the conditions which are accepted and practiced.” But they had not; rather, he mused, they would inevitably change the Community once inside it. With laboured irony, de Gaulle concluded that “it is very possible that Britain’s own evolution, and the evolution of the universe, might bring the English little by little towards the Continent, whatever delays the achievement might demand”. And he consoled the British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, for having “led the country the first steps down the path which one day, perhaps, will lead it to moor alongside the Continent” (De Gaulle 1963).

Almost exactly ten years later, on 1 January 1973, after a second de Gaulle “non”, de Gaulle’s resignation, Georges Pompidou’s election, four British prime ministers (Harold Macmillan, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Harold Wilson and Edward Heath), three general elections (1964, 1966 and 1970), a third application followed by extensive and protracted negotiations, a cross-party third reading vote in the House of Commons of 301 to 284 (following a close-shave second reading vote of 309 to 301) and (lest it be forgotten) a French confirmatory referendum, the United Kingdom finally acceded to the European Economic Community and hence, at long last, moored “alongside the Continent”. But how fast were those moorings? Very soon, it seemed, they started to slip.

Just over one year later, in February 1974, Harold Wilson almost unexpectedly won the first of two general elections that year with a manifesto pledge to renegotiate the United Kingdom’s terms of entry and submit them to a referendum. The subsequent 5 June 1975 referendum – itself a constitutional innovation – was comfortably won (67% to 32%), but probably only on the back of a second constitutional innovation relaxing the imperative of collective Cabinet responsibility for the duration of the referendum campaign (see, e.g. Wilson 1976: 76).