“There is a remarkably odd admixture of people who have aligned themselves with both sides”, he writes. "So, for instance, the grinning, demagogic crackpot Nigel Farage has shared a platform with the left-wing firebrand George Galloway, both advocating a British withdrawal from the EU. At the same time David Cameron and his excellent anti-austerity nemesis, the leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn, find themselves in the unusual position of seeing eye-to-eye on the issue and campaigning to keep Britain in.”
McKenna is no friend of the EU, and thinks Greece and the other peripheral countries should have left rather than submit to brutal austerity.
But “the UK is not a periphery country in the way in which Greece is…if Britain is withdrawn from the EU, the very power that is carrying through austerity – i.e. the British Tory government – will be strengthened rather than weakened in such a scenario..the UKIP element at home will be immeasurably strengthened, and the sense of xenophobia, of national chauvinism will become all the more claustrophobic…it will be the extreme right and rabidly anti-immigrant wing of the party that will be galvanized and very much come to the fore.”