"Whether Mr Cameron was right to call a referendum on the European Union is an issue for historians to argue about". Well no, actually, I think we have to argue about it right now, if that's alright with you. You see I think the question matters right now. And matters to Jews. I think I'd better explain.
It is often said that David Cameron promised a referendum just to keep his own MPs happy. And that's true. Of course he did. But there was more to it than that. The issue had become hard to handle in the parliamentary party because it was becoming hard to handle in the country.
Feelings were sufficiently strong before the 2005 general election that Tony Blair, resolute supporter of the EU though he was, felt he had to guarantee a referendum on the proposed EU constitution.
When the EU responded to a French referendum rejection by turning the constitution into the very similar Lisbon treaty, the Labour government abandoned its promise and ratified Lisbon without a national vote.
By doing this, Labour made three things inevitable. First, that there would be huge, building pressure for a national vote fuelled by promises made on all sides of the House. Second, that this would have to be an in-out referendum because, with the EU shy of further treaty change, the last opportunity to make it a verdict on a treaty had been gone for some time. Third, that if a referendum was promised, this time the promise would have to be kept.
The EU should heed the message of the UK referendum
And one more thing, perhaps more important than all of these. The pressure to have a referendum would continue to build because having one was profoundly right. I believe that we have made a mistake, possibly a very grave one, in choosing to leave the EU. But our membership was an increasingly significant constitutional commitment. Over four decades we have handed over a great deal of power to EU institutions which we would have been unable to retrieve as members.
It was simply right to ask people whether they assented.
Immediately after hearing that they do not assent seems an odd moment to decide we should never have asked. So what follows from this argument?
Well, obviously one thing is that the result should be accepted. This was a reasonable way to make a difficult decision. And the other thing is that we need to determine the mandate that it gives.
A referendum is the right way to decide a narrow constitutional question, but not to determine broader national policy. The vote determined policy on the EU. But I entirely reject the idea that we have voted to reject being a liberal, open free society. That was not on the ballot paper, and rightly so.
We Jews depend on a liberal open society for our safety and our ability to be British and Jewish at the same time. A rise of nativism, an "immigrants go home" culture and a turn away from cosmopolitanism would be profoundly dangerous to us as a community. We have to fight that interpretation of the ballot result. We cannot allow Britain to become that sort of country.
The Leave campaign slogan was "take back control". We have to ensure that when we do so it is for a more tolerant, multi-ethnic society, not a narrow, insular one.
The other thing that follows from the referendum is that Europe is pursuing a policy that is hard to sustain and could be very harmful to the continent. The EU effectively decided that insisting on the integrity of the four freedoms - goods, services, finance and people - was more important than British membership and that the process of integration needed to be preserved above all.
It has the right to decide this. But it is telling that there are very few countries that could now safely hold its own referendum.
And by suppressing the feeling of its own peoples , as we decided we could not do, the EU is storing up trouble that is leading to the worrying rise of populist movements. Sadly it may just conclude from our vote that the best thing to do is keep the issue away from voters.
For historical and economic reasons, the EU is more popular on the continent than it is in the UK. But sucking up power to a central body without asking people is perilous indeed. It should heed the message of the UK referendum. And Jews should worry that it probably won't.
