The referendum was a complete balls up and a guaranteed short term mistake but the EU was eventually going to come to this in my opinion. We protected our pound out of fear. The EU parliamentary members have always hated that. Can anyone honestly say that we could change the EU from the inside? Are we certain that it guaranteed 40 years of stability and growth?
I agree and said this myself earlier in the thread.
We were never fully signed up card carrying members. We were always reluctant members, looking for opt-outs and generally throwing a spanner in the works.
It's no secret that many other EU members were openly hostile to us during DC's disastrous "negotiations", where he got precisely nothing that he really wanted.
I wonder if the remain campaign might not have done better without his "negotiations". All that did is cemented in many people's minds how different we were from EU "proper", and how reluctant we were to subscribe to the core tenant of closer union. How we were starting to struggle badly to promote Britain's interests, even from *within* the EU.
DC really played this whole thing very poorly.