Flashback – January 2005

It was the result of a Shropshire Star poll long before the term Brexit had been coined.

And it is just one striking example of Shropshire's "journey" when it comes to the Common Market, European Economic Community, and European Union – all names for evolutions for the pan-Europe bloc which Britain joined in 1973 and, in case you missed it, has now left.

Because while in the 1970s Salopians were enthusiastically in support of the European project, by the early years of the new millennium attitudes had soured, as demonstrated by the result of that poll on January 28, 2005, when our readers gave a resounding thumbs down to Britain adopting a European constitution.

The question in our survey was: "Should the UK approve the treaty establishing a constitution for the European Union?”

Our lines were deluged with callers wanting to register their vote. Hundreds of readers rang in to our Euro hotline to have their say – and a massive 91.97 per cent rejected the idea. Put another way, only 8.03 per cent were in favour.

Despite a high-profile Whitehall campaign to persuade the electorate of the merits of closer ties with Europe, our poll underlined just how much of a battle the Government would face in persuading the public to back the proposed constitution.

Prime Minister Tony Blair had announced the previous April that he would call a referendum on the issue, having previously insisted that one was not necessary.

He said it was time to resolve “once and for all” whether Britain wanted to be at the heart of European Union decision-making.

If you have difficulty in recalling that referendum, don't worry, because it never happened, basically being overtaken by events – specifically referendums in both France and The Netherlands in which voters decisively rejected the constitution idea, leaving it dead in the water although, in typical EU fashion, it was to be refloated as the Treaty of Lisbon.

Tony Blair signed the treaty to establish a European constitution, a step on the path towards greater integration, in Rome in October 2004. What did it mean? According to the Daily Mail it meant "handing over yet more of Britain's sovereignty to Brussels."

The 2005 referendums in France, which voted 54.7 per cent No, and The Netherlands, 61.6 per cent No, meant that it was never ratified, and in the end it became of only academic interest as the whole thing was superseded by the Treaty of Lisbon.

The affair can be seen as a waymark in the trend of public opinion as regards the European Union.

Cast your minds back, if you can, to 1975, when Britons were given a referendum on whether to stay in the Common Market, as it was commonly called then.

Shropshire was in those days considerably more gung-ho about Europe than the country as a whole. In the referendum held on June 5 the county saw, on a turnout of 63 per cent, a total of 113,044 Salopians voting yes (72.3 per cent) and 43,329 voting no (27.7 per cent). Total nationwide yes was 67.2 per cent against 32.8 per cent no.

It was to be over 40 years before British voters were given another direct say on the fundamental European question.

As we know, the outcome was a seismic shock, whereas perhaps it should not have been to our politicians, commentators, and opinion-formers if they had had their fingers more closely on the pulse of ordinary voters.

Shropshire voted decisively on June 23, 2016, to leave the European Union.

There is no single countywide figure (unless you care to do your own maths), because Salopians voted either as part of the Shropshire Council patch, or as part of the Telford & Wrekin Council patch.

In Shropshire the split was 104,166 to Leave (56.9 per cent) and Remain 78,987 (43.1 per cent). Turnout was 77.42 per cent.

Telford & Wrekin was significantly more Eurosceptic, the figures being 56,649 (63.2 per cent) votes for Leave, and 32,954 (36.8 per cent) for Remain. Turnout was 72.15 per cent.

It is often said that older people were more likely to vote Leave than younger people.

It's interesting to note then that the older Salopians who voted to Leave in 2016 must have be the same Salopians who, as youngsters, voted so overwhelmingly to Remain in 1975.