So, my foray to Cambridge for that Cambridge Union UK/EU debate ended (as I expected) in a huge win for the Remain tendency, ably led by Lord Ashdown. He concluded the debate for the Remain side with a rousing speech that seamlessly combined sound points (“The only world leader who will welcome Brexit is Putin!) and weird nonsense (“The only way to have a crime-free UK is to stay in the EU!”).

My own argument boiled down to the simple proposition that the EU was slowly but surely going the way of former Yugoslavia. It had accumulating serious problems, and no way to resolve them as it was now too big and subject to voting paralysis. A vote to leave the UK would be a jolt to the system that forced everyone to look anew at what made sense by way of European integration and how best to achieve it. The Remain argument proclaimed it was ‘safer’ to stay in the EU. But who was really safer: the cold fearful people in the lifeboats, or the warm, tipsy people still propping up the bars in the Titanic?

As dutiful readers here know, it’s not what you say – it’s what they hear. And in this case the Union audience, predominantly younger people no doubt inclined to favour pragmatic if not mushy ‘internationalism’, heard that the Brexit side of the argument (self included, it must be said) lacked focus and impact, particularly when it came to explaining what a post-Brexit UK would actually do to sort out its relations with the EU and everyone else.

In other words, the Remainers ‘framed’ the issues skilfully to favour their side by playing up what they saw as the positive features of the current situation: Steady as she goes! Change means dangerous uncertainty! This played on the deeply entrenched human instinct of loss aversion: we typically value what we already have more than what we might get. The Leavers side did not manage (on the night) to overcome that by showing that Time for a Change! made sense, the more so as it was not made clear what exactly the Change might be.

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There are hard choices to be made (and sharp disagreements about how to advance them in practice), if the UK does vote No.

First and foremost, how to start any Brexit negotiation? Some say that it’s best boldly to cut the knot and just leave the EU by repealing forthwith the UK legislation that effected the UK’s entry into the Union, then sort out the detail. Others insist that that would be far too disruptive – the only sensible option is to use the Article 50 process in the EU’s own treaties that we have agreed and negotiate a way out more or less ‘sensibly’. See more on that here.

Maybe I’m getting too cautious in my galloping old age, but the Article 50 route looks much the best. It does of course open all sorts of new problems, not least that the whole business gets bogged down in interminable procedural bickering that itself intensifies and extends the already damaging uncertainty. On the other hand, we are not going to float off into the Atlantic after a Brexit vote: we’ll need close and constructive relations with the EU after Brexit, and that will need negotiating. Best to do that within an already agreed framework.

What exactly will EU partners want from us in such a renegotiation? Interesting question.

The money matters. The UK is a massive net contributor to EU spending, so if we leave how will that gap in the EU Budget be filled? Others will have to pay more, and everyone will have to do with less. But how much more, and less? That depends on what we decide. In particular, would we want a rapid halt to UK financial transfers to the EU pot, or would we offer a phased-in reduction over quite some years?

Or might we offer both? The UK’s contribution to EU projects via the current EU Budget system ends forthwith or thereabouts, but the UK continues to contribute eg to Structural Funds for central Europe on a new legal basis forming a shared investment partnership. That is potentially an attractive result for everyone, offering reduced waste and bureaucracy and more creativity in how ‘EU’ money is spent.

Some argue that the EU can somehow manage without our money – what it really values is the ‘habit of cooperation’. We awkward Brits bring something different to EU processes and policies in terms of practical common sense and good order. Again, there is no reason in principle why much of that could not continue where it makes sense but on a different legal basis. Which (some say, not unreasonably) poses another issue: if you Brits indeed want to keep many things in Europe substantively as they are because all things considered they do make sense, is it really worth all the hassle of leaving?

What in fact would happen will depend on the way the issues are framed. Brussels and top EU capitals have made clear that they have to stop what they revealingly describe as ‘reform contagion‘. That may require them to ‘punish’ the UK as best they can, pour encourager les autres:

Brexit is something which does not only affect your country but our country,” the former German deputy finance minister Steffen Kampeter warned. “The cherry-picking after torturing us for months is not acceptable.”

That idea of ‘punishment’ is noteworthy and odious. Who wants to stay in a relationship with someone threatening to ‘punish’ you if you leave it? Still, there is a key point here: if the whole point of Brexit is to allow the UK to do some key things differently, that opens the way to allow the EU to do key things differently too. Such as (say) strive to set up a new financial centre and move that power away from London. Or intensify cooperation in defence/security areas without pesky British vetoes or quibbling.

Maybe that is in fact a good thing, and the whole benefit of Brexit? To allow those European countries that really want to set up a European superstate to do so?

And if we vote Remain, won’t that happen anyway where we are trying to hold it back from a far weaker position?