On a visit to Istanbul the December before last, a Turkish man was going on and on at me about how sad it was that the EU was so reluctant to grant membership to his country. I explained to him that it was nothing personal on my part and that being a reluctant citizen of the undemocratic EU, neither I nor any other citizen had had any say in the matter. He asked about the EU Parliament but when I told him that it had no power to make laws and was just a talking shop run by the unelected officials he was still keen for Turkey to join.

It is sad that Britons do have membership and don’t want it, while Turks haven’t got it and do want it. Surely the best solution would be for the UK to give its unwanted membership away to Turkey – rather like the way a bag of old, worn and no longer fashionable clothes gets donated to a charity shop in the hope that they might, after all, prove useful to someone.