“Scottish unionists care more about the Union than Europhiles care about the EU. The Remain campaign – with its emotionless appeal to personal finances – made that abundantly clear”

In today’s New Statesman newsletter, a familiar characterisation of an ‘emotionless’ Remain campaign, and Europhiles who didn’t care much about the EU. My recollection is that not caring much was the point – our membership was a settled thing, soemthing you could rely on, and didn’t need active consideration. I didn’t have to go around caring about the EU, it was just there, making it easy to move around and doing a reasonable job of keeping monopolists and polluters in check. Brexit was so difficult because it called something settled into question. I suppose this is a reminder that lots of things people think are settled are being called into question, like cars, or pensions, or gender, and lots of us are being asked to care about parts of our lives that previously we could just unthinkingly rely on.