PASSIONATE, urbane, humorous: Lord David Owen held his audience at Hexham Book Festival in the palm of his hand.

In Hexham to talk ostensibly about his pro-Brexit stance and the pamphlet, The UK’s In-Out Referendum, he’s just published in support of it, he nonetheless roved Europe and its political situation generally.

But the former Labour Foreign Secretary – a post he held under Jim Callaghan during the latter part of the 1970s – began with that intervention by Barack Obama.

Lord Owen’s American wife had laughed at the use of the word ‘queue’ instead of the ‘line’ Americans use; the script writers were undoubtedly in Downing Street and not the White House.

“The thing that shocked me was that in his Telegraph article, Obama said what had kept the peace in Europe was the States and the European Union working together. Well, if you are knowledgeable about history ...

“It’s an outrageous view and one that makes me wonder whether Obama really does want an EU in the way they have a United State of America.”

The fact Obama had seen fit to interject in the democratic process of another country at all was truly objectionable.

“There is an international respect for the electorate,” said Lord Owen.

The host of the event, regional BBC political editor Richard Moss, pointed out that at the time Owen left the Labour party in the 1980s, to form the breakaway Social Democratic Party, Labour had been committed to the European Union.

But now he had decided that Britain was better off outside of Europe?

“I don’t think I have changed my mind on this issue, but if the focus has changed, you shouldn’t worry about changing too,” he answered.

“What changed for me was the Euro and the idea you can have a single currency without a single country. I have never been a federalist.”

He remembered, as a junior doctor working on shift in a hospital at the time, watching the broadcast of Hugh Gaitskell’s speech from the 1962 Labour Party conference.

Gaitskell claimed that Britain’s participation in a federal Europe would mean ‘the end of Britain as an independent European state, the end of 1,000 years of history’.

Lord Owen said: “I wasn’t prepared to give up Britain then and I’m not prepared to today either.

“In my 50 years in politics, I have watched the salami slicing of our EU involvement and we are a short way off from having an EU country.”

The strapline of his new pamphlet is ‘EU Foreign and Defence Policy Reform’ and it is over these two key areas that he feels Britain must retain control.

There are 11 or 12 countries in Europe who weren’t capable of living within the disciplines of a very close Euro state – Greece and Spain, with their inordinately high rates of unemployment, among them.

And then we have Turkey on the road in.

He said: “It’s ridiculous that the president (of the European Council) is saying we should speed up access – 75 million Turks will have access to the EU within four years.

“I say ‘OK, bring Turkey in, but not free movement of labour’.”

It wasn’t racist to say immigration had not been handled properly and that more effective strategies needed to be put in place to better spread the impact on local communities.

“Just look at Bradford,” he said. “I would slow down the inflow of European Community immigrants and be more generous to those people fleeing for their lives from wars.

“If I was the Prime Minister, I would defy Europe and let them take me through the European Court of Justice, by which point I would have been able to do just that.”

It should be remembered that this whole European structure hadn’t existed until the 1980s, but now Britain had become too comfortable in this single market with its protectionist customs controls.

George Osborne had used every adverse indicator he could about the effects of a Brexit, but even under his assumption that economic growth would drop by six per cent, that still meant there would be growth.

Obama, Cameron and Osborne had spent the past seven years trying to end the European economic crisis without success and it would take the collapse of just one of the big members, such as Italy or Spain, to take down the rest.

Lord Owen said: “I would say to people, don’t take a gamble on June 23 – take a calculated risk and vote to leave.

“There is going to be real trouble in the Eurozone which will affect us, so it is better to get out now.

“My calculation is that the risk of being part of a Eurozone that goes under is greater than the risk that comes with transition.

“The only thing you have to fear is fear itself.”