As Boris has so must we all, its time to make a choice about the EU. In choosing I guess it depends on what concerns you feel need to be addressed and what institution you believe would do it best.

In light of the current challenges facing the UK I really don’t understand how withdrawing from the European Union is in our national benefit. In fact I would dare suggest that the solution to many of these issues is almost certainly only found while within the EU. Questions such as climate change, the refuge crisis, international tax evasion and the peril of unskilled labour are almost all regional and international questions, no longer questions for the nation state alone.

Now that is not to say that the EU is a perfect organization, in fact I would go as far as suggesting it is terrible non representative organization. On balance though I suspect that the EU has been beneficial to me individually and I suspect that deeper integration into it would actually be better still. I understand the concern over the question of national sovereignty, but what sovereignty would the UK have alone? The right to make decisions and then either be ignored or face being ostracized because of them? Better an opportunity to develop international policy and then see it adopted by the EU, across the EU. Of course such a strategy is built on the idea of a level playing field and the UK, EU relationship has always been defined by the special UK terms rather than equality.

In my opinion the real shame of EU referendum is the lack of an opportunity to support a deeper integration into the European Union experiment, for the separate nations to unite and face the world for the betterment of the individual nations, Europe and ultimately the world.