GEORGETOWN, Guyana, Stabroek News - In the midst of the shaking of the continent of Europe as Russia invaded Crimea, and tore it off from Ukraine as peremptorily as Nikita Krushchev had previously attached it to that country; and even as Britain has played a substantial role in marshalling the European position on the issue, the British government has also taken time off to continue its preoccupation with what has now come to be called Brexit.

This acronym relates, as is probably well known by now, to the promise made by British Prime Minister Cameron in January last year, that if the Conservative Party wins the next general elections, due on May 7, 2015, then the returned Conservative government will hold a referendum to seek the opinion of the British people as to whether the country should remain, or renegotiate its position in the European Union.

To outside observers, Prime Minister Cameron’s decision must seem odd indeed. For one thing, the notion of a referendum is not a normal strategy of the British, though it is well to recall that then Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson did hold one in 1975 as a form of endorsement of Britain’s entry into the then European Common Market. But he, no doubt, was hoping to settle the matter once and for all.