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The Overton window is a term from political science, meaning the acceptable range of political thought in a culture at a given moment.

It was the creation of Joseph Overton, a think-tank intellectual based in Michigan, who died in 2003 at 43 after a solo plane accident.

His crucial insight, one which both emerged from and was central to the work of the think-tank right,

was that the window of acceptability can be moved. An idea can start far outside the

political mainstream. Flat taxes, abolish the IRS, more guns in schools, building a beautiful

wall and making Mexico pay. But once it has been stated and argued for, framed and restated,

it becomes thinkable. It crosses over from the fringe of right-wing think-tankery

to journalistic fellow-travellers, then it crosses over to the fringe of electoral politics,

then it becomes a thing the fringe of electoral politics,

then it becomes a thing people start seriously advocating as a possible policy.

The window has moved, and rough beasts come slouching through it to be born.

British politics has never seen a pure example of the Overton window than the referendum on membership of the EU.

In 1994, the billionaire James Goldsmith founded a political party whose sole purpose was to advocate a referendum.

The referendum party was a long, long way outside the political mainstream, and a significant number of its members were openly mad. The party's one moment of success is the wrong word,

mainstream attention, came when Goldsmith himself stood in the 1997 general election in Putney against David Meller,

the cabinet minister who had been caught having an affair with an actress.

Her fuck-and-tell story ran in the tabloids and included the fictional detail that, to quote the front

page of the sun, Mella made love in Chelsea Strip.

In a better-ordered society, making up things like that

wins you the pre-goncourt. Goldsmith did poorly, coming forth with 1,518 votes, but Meller lost

anyway. At the declaration of the result, Goldsmith and his supporters shouted,

...