Stuart's second husband, Derek Scott, died last summer. He served as Tony Blair's economic adviser, but had the strength of mind to argue, well before it became a fashionable view, that Britain should not join the euro. "He was someone who always challenged the received wisdom," said Stuart. "If everybody agreed on something, he'd see it as a sign it needed challenging."

Parliamentary democracy can only work if each party contains at least some members who are brave enough to say what they think, regardless of what effect this may have on their careers. When Germany gave up the deutschmark and entered the euro, most of its political class was prevailed upon by Helmut Kohl to refrain from expressing the deep and justified anxieties which this policy aroused in the German people. Stuart chose instead to become British, and to point out that, judged by the test of whether or not one can throw the rascals out, the EU is scandalously undemocratic.