Dr Lee Rotherham of the Taxpayers Alliance has written a lively paper about the practical options for the UK should it leave the UK, with the underlying theme of calibrating the ‘national interest’. It gets a bit complicated here and there:

The arithmetic is set out below. f1+f2+f3 s1 w p1 5a = – + – + – + – + f8 f4+f5+f6 s2 d+f7 p2+t a is the end calculation, consisting of five parts to be taken into consideration – hence 5a. The top side of the fraction (the numerator) supplies advantages of membership, the bottom side (or denominator) the negatives; so added together a figure larger than a baseline of 1 indicates membership is advantageous to a particular state.

Ignore all that. He helpfully lists a lot of practical forms of post-Brexit relationship:

A considerable number of different forms of treaty exist to link states with the European Commission. We might summarise them as follows:

• EU membership

• EEA membership

• Customs Union membership

• Small territory association

• Customs access plus broad spectrum competences engagement

• Customs access plus limited competences engagement

• Bilateral developed free trade deal

• Free (free-er) trade arrangement

• Bilateral inter-trading bloc agreement

• Advantageous trade access for a developing country

• Non-economic treaty

• WTO-level default.

Like an add-your-own topping pizza, even within similar brackets of treaty, different forms exist to answer the different needs and priorities of various trading states. Mexico’s agreement with the EU had a section relating to mining; Morocco’s had more emphasis on fruit.

An audit of the types of agreement that have previously been reached – a majority of which still operate today – reveals that there are even more potential models. There is not an obligation to ‘take the EU or leave it’. There is not even an EU/EEA/Out trichotomy. The answer to the meaning of the EU, the universe and everything genuinely in this case does come to 42.

Read the whole thing. He concludes that all things considered, we are indeed ‘better off out’.

He politely asked me to write a foreword, so I did:

The mind boggles at the prospect of the eventual ghastly national ‘debate’ about the UK’s EU membership as and when the referendum looms. Bewildering statistics and examples will fly thick and fast as the Ins and Outs each try to frame the issues in a way that suits their case. But the arguments will boil down to simple human propositions.

The Ins will argue that ‘steady as she goes’ is the wise and above all safe course. Don’t rock the boat, and especially don’t let nasty nutty anti-internationalist xenophobes (mainly Right but some Left too) rock it. We are now so entwined with EU processes that breaking away will inevitably cause huge uncertainly and real disruption. Does anyone really need all that risk, given the instability in the middle East and even in Europe’s own Ukraine?

The Outs will insist that it makes a lot sense not only to rock the boat, but indeed to jump out of it when the boat is heading to disaster. EU Europe is no longer a ‘safe space’ but a complacent, declining and badly run area. Yes, there will be disruption and uncertainty. But what we have now is also increasingly disrupted and uncertain and simply incompetent. much better to take back confident control of our own destiny, thereby freeing huge resources for ambitious new internal and external policies. You Ins are the pessimists – we Outs are the optimists!

Perhaps the hardest issue in any massive decision like this one is Time. Over what period is success measured? And what is ‘success’ anyway in this context? What if we do leave the EU and end up worse off for (say) a decade but then bounce back very strongly for two or three decades? What if we end up rather worse off for the foreseeable future, but take our own decisions once again? Is less money but more freedom a deal worth having?

I recall an FCO Leadership Conference back in the mid-2000s addressed by Prime minister Tony Blair. In the Q&A our then Ambassador in Paris warned the Prime minister that current British policies were going down very badly in Paris. Tony Blair said something fascinating and perceptive in reply. Something to the effect of: “Well, at some point you have to make an almost aesthetic choice about what you’re trying to do and what you are.”

Dr Rotherham’s paper points out a key truth. Canada has achieved intense economic integration with the United States but stayed a free, separate sovereign state with its own voice in senior global counsels. This is the almost aesthetic choice we face in our UK referendum. To be Canada? Or Illinois?

That’s the choice, simply put. Except that we may be contemplating being a Canada next to a USA that is starting to disintegrate in a generally medieval direction?