It would be very easy to assume that the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union in January 2020 finally put the running sore of UK-EU relations to bed for good: after several years of rancorous debate, might not the UK move on to other issues? Buta moment’s reflection will point towards the need for having an understanding of the European issue in British politics, not just now but also for the longer-term future.

In this article, I want to try to map out the historical trajectory of euroscepticism, both as a concept in of itself and as a marker wider currents. The central argument to be made is that the existence and the persistence of a European ‘other’ to the British ‘us’ means that euroscepticism is now entering its third major era since the Second World War and will continue to have significant effects on both rhetoric and policy in the UK.