IT HAS always been suggested that if the EU referendum vote were taken again, it would produce a different outcome.

I have always doubted those claims, but in light of the recent comments by the European Commission president, Jean Claude Juncker, I may be wrong.

The difference would be that a new referendum would deliver a much bigger vote to leave, thanks to Juncker demonstrating how vindictive Brussels can be if its view of how the world should be is challenged.

Juncker claimed the EU was not like a golf club you could just leave because you no longer wanted to play. The question that prompts is why?

There is nothing in the Lisbon Treaty that says you must pay a huge penalty to leave, despite the UK having paid generously into the EU budget for many years. Westminster has made clear that it will meet its financial obligations up to 2020.

But now, like a landlord withholding a security deposit and making fresh demands, the EU wants more.

Some in Europe seem to enjoy this rhetoric, but regardless of who wins the French presidential election, the EU needs to get ready for another big member state challenging how the EU works.

Those, including Germany, seemingly egging Juncker on, might do well to ask what damage they will cause to their own economies by driving the UK to a hard Brexit, where it walks away with no deal.

The UK buys more from the EU-27 than it sells, so both sides need a sensible trade deal.

On food alone, the Irish economy would be devastated by lack of access to the UK market and German car workers are unlikely to relish the loss of one of the country’s best markets.

The Juncker rhetoric is what happens when politics take over from common sense and economics. It is a measure of what is wrong with the EU that normally pragmatic national politicians allow someone like Juncker to mount a personal crusade against the UK.

Juncker has never been an impressive politician. The former Luxembourg prime minister got the top EU job by default, but only David Cameron opposed his appointment.

He has never liked the UK, because it opposed his federalist ambitions to make the EU more powerful than its member states.

Despite the CAP and agriculture accounting for half the EU budget, he has never shown much interest in rural issues. As part of a plan to create eurozone jobs and economic growth, Juncker promised simplification of the CAP, but that has not happened. Indeed, with greening, it is getting worse, rather than better.

He has also contributed to the mess the EU is in over genetically modified (GM) crops and other science-linked decisions. He let his Scottish chief scientific adviser, Anne Glover, go and scrapped the post, because he refused to accept that science should guide decision making.

In general, he supports what makes the commission look good with EU citizens, rather than what is right. He does not like being challenged – and the UK leaving and the prospect of negotiations with a tough prime minister is the biggest one he has faced in his political career.

The most bizarre demand from Juncker, and others in the commission and European parliament responsible for the Brexit negotiations, is the new suggestion that the UK should continue paying for the CAP until 2022.

There is no logic behind this and it should be easily dismissed. This goes beyond the present EU budget, to which the UK is committed.

It also goes beyond the date when farmers in the UK will no longer be part of the CAP. This underlines a big problem for the EU in developing the post-2020 CAP – the fact that the UK’s departure will blow a huge hole in the budget.

This could be around 15% of the current CAP. This means the EU will either have to increase the cost for the remaining members of the EU-27 – in other words, heap more costs on to the paymaster member states – or cut its spending plans for agriculture and rural development.

If that happens, real markets and real money will become even more important. In that situation, the EU-27 really will need a Brexit deal, rooted in free and open trade with the UK, as one of Europe’s major economies with a big appetite for imported food. That is common sense – the rest being politics.