In May it was cordially welcomed as a full participant in the OECD's highest-profile activity: a convention to outlaw bribery.

ECONOMIST: The OECD and corruption

Even that window was vanishingly small, and it closed in 1998 with the Lewinsky revelations and the hothouse insanity of impeachment, in which Gingrich was a full participant and which helped cost him his job.

FORBES: Newt Gingrich, Bipartisan

But, at a lecture at the LSE earlier this week, Sir Malcolm Rifkind argued that it was "overwhelmingly in Britain's interest to remain a full participant in the biggest single market in the world, with the ability to shape the rules".

BBC: Europe's summer of argument