In the final hours before voting opens in the British EU referendum, I took a nature ramble. You might clearly have as much time on your hands as I evidently did today to sit through all of this, but it is my last lamenting statement of why I shall be voting In, tomorrow morning.

 

What a grim climate we’ve created in the last weeks of this campaign. What dark moments. How split we have been on it – all of us find ourselves disagreeing with loved ones and mates. Which is why we can’t simply chuck around lazy judgements about the positions – we’ve all thought about it, felt it, agonised over it, too much.

The EU is woefully undemocratic. It is prey to lobyists and internal quangos and is unacountably opaque. But it is more than an economic block – it is a cultural integration. And this idea of it, for me, ultimately creates the more positive climate in which to do business of every human kind. Some of which is extremely pressing and will take something like our common market to tackle. If we can just turn the supertanker of it, to help turn many others.

It is currently part of the corrupt-seeming system. But it could give us a way to really face the future. Much more, I believe, than an explosively selfish-looking Brexit. But either way, tragically, when the poles finally open, we won’t be hearing the last of that bloody awful word “Brexit”. Gah.

Whatever you do, do it with a clear concience and a dollop of grace if you can. And I too, shall attempt to not be a dick about it. See you on the other side.