In or out, Cameron's EU referendum may leave a toxic legacy | Michael White

The history of the political device loved by populists is not a happy one. In Scotland, it has created divisions and one-party rule

Why is it that a referendum campaign feels so different from the mood of a general election: more impassioned, more in your face, more bitterly divisive?

I felt uneasily the same covering Scotland’s 2014 campaign on independence from England, less so 41 years ago during Britain’s first Brexit ballot in 1975 over its barely dry membership of what we all called the Common Market.

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