THE CHEAT SHEET. Should I stay or should I go?

And in every Union that is fraying at the seams.

Well, ‘torn asunder’ may be overstating it a tad, but the idea of the European Union as a geographical unit across political borders but with a single currency — which was once romanticised as a realisation of John Lennon’s syrupy ‘Imagine there’s no country’ dream — is arguably facing one of its most sobering reality checks.

Barely six weeks from now, British voters will vote on a referendum to answer one defining question: “Should the UK remain a member of the EU or leave the Union?” Opinion polls point to a too-close-to-call vote, and the prospect of a “Brexit” — a British exit from the EU — isn’t entirely inconceivable.

Britain has been in the EU since 1973, but at best only half-heartedly. Under pressure from ‘Euro-sceptics’ at home, it had refused to sign on to the single euro currency or to the Schengen Agreement on passport-free travel. In a broad sense, entry into the ‘European Common Market’ was oversold as a passport to prosperity. That promise hasn’t exactly been realised. Instead, the supra-national EU bureaucracy has kept scriptwriters of comedy serials gainfully employed with its absurd laws.

For instance, in 1995, the EU, headquartered in Brussels, issued guidelines to ban bananas and cucumbers that were too bendy — or as the ‘eurocrats’ with a fondness for terminological exactitude put it, had “abnormal curvature”. (That directive was repealed in 2008.) Likewise, there are EU rules that prohibit diabetics from driving; and others that prohibit manufacturers of bottled water from suggesting water consumption would fight dehydration. As a droll episode of the utterly British Yes, Minister teleseries observed wryly, “the typical Common Market official is said to have the organising capacity of the Italians, the flexibility of the Germans, and the modesty of the French.” More and more Britons bristle at the fact that about $12 billion of their tax income goes every year towards EU budget payments — and subsidises the leisure of euro crat busybodies.

Not at all. For all the perceived downsides — and there are others, including concerns arising from the influx of refugees from Syria and Iraq into Europe — EU membership is not entirely without benefits for Britain. It’s just that with the euro zone in economic turmoil in recent years, and the perception following the recent terror attacks in Paris and Brussels that the Schengen visa arrangement has rendered overall security protocols susceptible to the weakest links within the region, centrifugal forces are propelling an outward drift in the EU.

A Brexit would have profound implications for the euro zone, and given that the EU is at its core a political project — it was conceived primarily to ensure political stability in war-torn Europe — it would have immense geopolitical repercussions.

And just as a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon can set off tornadoes in far-off places, any turbulence in the euro zone could have malefic effects around the world. It’s a scene that’s played out before: every time there’s been a sovereign debt crisis in the euro zone, international financial markets have been roiled, including in India.

To paraphrase the immortal Bette Davis in All About Eve , “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

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