Nick Robinson

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In three weeks' time we will discover whether that referendum vote has dissolved the glue that bound voters to the party they have supported in the past.

That is what I have set out to examine in my Election Takeaways - a chat over a bite to eat with different groups of voters to discover what is on their minds and how they are going about deciding who, if anyone, to vote for.

This week, I shared a Thai takeaway with seven people who voted Remain in the EU referendum in the Tory marginal of Bedford.

Like the Leavers I spoke to last week in Halifax, they were chosen for us by the pollsters Ipsos Mori.

When Theresa May strode out of the door of Number 10 to call this election she claimed it was all about Brexit and not, as many believed, about her desire for her own mandate and a bigger Commons majority.

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When the campaigning is over, the leaders' buses have been parked and the votes counted, one question is sure to be asked: "What on earth did they mean by that?!"

Politicians, pollsters and pundits like me spend our lives trying to delve into the psyche of those curious folk who, unlike us, are not overgrown election trainspotters who spend hours studying politicians' speeches, analysing their manifestos and nerdily swapping election trivia.

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It began as a throwaway line in a diary column I wrote to mark my traumatic return to full-time work at the BBC.

Traumatic because my debut on BBC Radio 4's Today programme was memorable largely for the scratchy sound of a voice struggling to cope with the demands I was making of it, after it was damaged in an otherwise highly successful operation to remove a tumour.

How does being in the EU affect me? What difference would it make to me and my life if we left?

Let's be honest, few of us have ever had to give much, if any, thought to these questions. The fact we are members of a club of 28 nations is something most people take as a given - like the weather. However, now they are beginning to be asked as people to ponder how to vote in the EU referendum.

I don't know enough to decide. That is the cry you hear again and again if you ask people how they'll vote in the referendum on the UK's membership of the EU. Even political trainspotters like me would be hard-pressed to spell out exactly what remaining in the EU or leaving it would mean.

That's why we are all on a shared journey in which we should not look to "experts" to deliver us the "facts".

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It was indeed a "big" Budget - just as the chancellor said it would be.

It was delivered by a politician with "big ambitions".

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"Big. Very Big". That's how one well-placed insider responded when asked to describe the Budget.

It ought to be. After all, this is the first Conservative budget in almost 20 years. The last was delivered by Ken Clarke in 1996. It has to deliver promises repeated for so long but yet to be delivered, like the cut to inheritance tax.

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The defence secretary will open the door to RAF airstrikes against terrorist targets in Syria in a speech today.

Michael Fallon will tell MPs that a new parliament should consider afresh the case for attacking the forces of Isis or the so-called Islamic State not just in Iraq but in Syria as well.

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The BBC understands that the prime minister has accepted that it may not be possible to change the EU's treaties - the laws on which it is based - before the UK votes in a referendum on whether to stay in or leave the EU.

In recent meetings with fellow European Union leaders David Cameron has argued instead for what officials call an "irreversible lock" and "legally binding" guarantees that at some future date EU law will be changed to accommodate Britain's renegotiation.