by Brian Henderson

“AND, as the royal state coach moves sedately up the Mall, Her Majesty waves to the adoring crowds who line her entire route from Buckingham Palace to St Pauls Cathedral, as she begins what will undoubtedly be the highlight of the week-long series of events to celebrate her one hundredth birthday.
“When she arrives of course she will be met by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and US president Donald Trump who will be the hosts of the much anticipated televised episode of 'This is Your Reign' which will be beamed to more than 100 million homes across the English-speaking world.
“The programme will, of course, look at the different periods of Her Majesty’s life and reign – when the country was involved in the hardships and the privations of the war years, the austerity of the post-war period, the EU membership years, and then the country’s brief spell outside the European union before it was finally bought up lock, stock and barrel by an American conglomerate with the backing of several Chinese corporations and Indian business interests."
I awakened with a bit of a start one morning after over-dosing on the Queen’s birthday celebrations last week – but while the dream had been pretty scary, my relief at wakening was somewhat tempered by the sobering thought that as we throw open the pages of The Scottish Farmer a week today to catch up on all the latest farming news, we will know if we’re in or out of the EU.
Now, while I’d include myself in the huge lump of the population which has had Her Majesty as a constant throughout their life, I might be guilty over-egging the thing if I said the same of EU membership.
But the EU has certainly been around for the entirety of my working life – and it seems that much of it has been devoted to attending countless meetings on reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy. 
Perhaps there was a misplaced belief that we could have some influence on how the CAP developed, but I generally got the impression that most folk were simply trying to get a handle on what had been decided and what it would mean for their businesses.
You could debate whether the countless man-hours invested in discussing the endless minutiae could have been better and more productively spent – but regardless of where the policies originated they would still need to be dissected and scrutinised to see how they would affect our individual businesses.
But, while the realisation that what has long been the distant elephant of the EU referendum is now fast approaching comes as a bit of a shock, it has undoubtedly been at the back of our minds for quite some time – and it’s a pretty fair bet that most people have long-since passed the saturation point for taking much more in on the topic. 
I’d also guess that most folk will have made up their minds on the issue quite some time ago and that the few details or salient points of any consequence which have filtered out of the increasingly fevered debate during the last few, frantic weeks of political posturing, campaigning and televised debates will have done little to change anyone’s mind. 
But while the prospect of exiting the EU – and with it all the changes that this would inevitably mean for our industry – might in itself be a frightening thought, what sends a real shiver down my spine is not so much the fact that we might actually end up leaving the EU – but that it’s quite likely that such a decision could well be taken for all the wrong reasons.
The Little Englander attitude that we’re better than those Johnny Foreigners and the belief that we’ll show them how we can make the country great again, which seems to prevail in the leave camp, not only hints at a misplaced notion of superiority but also smacks of a petty, insular approach which quite simply wouldn’t work in the modern world where a global outlook has to be adopted.
I guess one of the long-standing problems with democracy as a whole – and with referenda (and, it has to be said, with American presidential primaries) in particular – is the fact that being narrow minded, easily led, bigoted, or even downright xenophobic constitutes no barrier to having a vote. 
Of course our own industry doesn’t escape here – because anyone who believes that things would be plain sailing once we’ve shaken Europe’s dust – and along with it the ashes from the bonfire of the regulations - from our boots is seriously deluded.
While no overnight change was ever going to be on the cards even once the protracted divorce proceedings are completed, there’s little chance that there will be any substantial reduction in the level of red tape with which we’ll have to comply. 
And anyone who thinks that farming’s interests are likely to be to the fore in the development of a national policy outside the EU quite simply needs to get a grip.
For while our own papers, magazines and meetings have concentrated on the implications which leaving Europe will have on our own industry, food and farming have scarcely merited a mention in the wider debate. 
And whereas during the last EU referendum on membership back in the 70s the price of food was a major issue – with Europe being accused of forcing prices up – the whole agri-food sector has hardly rated a mention in these times of plentiful, cheap food.
But, harking back to my scary dream, while there are those who might object to the constancy of the monarchy, the US presidential nominations have shown that a populist alternative – riding high on undeliverable promises which appeal to the narrow-minded – constitutes no improvement. 
Let’s not make that sort of mistake on EU membership.