On the eve of the UK's referendum to stay in or leave the EU, I'm nervous and filled with trepidation. I feel we're on the precipice of something terrible - a decision of monumental proportions looms. Part of me wishes I had a pair of Wellies on, like the proverbial Welsh sheep on the edge of a cliff, not to push back, but to whack Cameron over the head with. Hard.
Whatever the outcome, change will come.
If the UK votes Leave, the flood gates of a torrent of mini-tsunamis affecting millions of people will ensue: indeed affecting billions of people around the world. If they vote to Remain, the UK will be viewed with a certain amount of suspicion in European circles for putting the entire Union through the mill and a confident chest-puffing UK could demand more changes from Brussels.
The debate has been riddled with inaccuracies and political gerrymandering of incomparable deceit, but on the other side, are people like me being too idealistic?
Too idealistic to think that 70 years of peace in Europe is in no small way thanks to the EU and its forbears the ECSC and EEC? Too idealistic to think that the EU offers great developmental opportunities for former Soviet economies?
The EU is far from perfect - this is not the claim of those who support membership - and there are many things even the most ardent, Beethoven crooning Europhile would want changing. The response to the refugee and migrant crisis in the Mediterranean was late and lackluster - not to mention murderous; the common agricultural policy still needs much reform and gobbles up far too much of the EU budget; and the democratic deficit which is personified in the faceless bureaucrat based in Belgium, is tantamount to government by dictatorship.
But it gives me hope of how countries can work together; how there can be benefits for all; how centuries of conflict can be consigned to the history books and we move forward as one.
Idealistic? Yes, and there is nothing like it on earth - no other club or group comes close to what the EU has achieved since its nascent founding back in 1956.
This is not a zero sum game, either. By being part of the EU, we don't cut off trading opportunities with the BRICs, of NAFTA or other big entities - in fact it's made easier by the sheer weight of the EU-28 members. We can negotiate harder as 500m people as opposed to if the UK were alone - a mere 65m - barely 10% the size.
We should change from within...we certainly can't change from the outside, can we?!
The UK is now a post-imperial marvel; a place so rich in diversity that London has a Muslim mayor, we have black Lords in the House and chicken tikka is the country's best loved dish. Why should we over-heat now that Poles are fixing our boilers - the same way Caribbean men were asked to drive our buses; or that Romanians are staffing our hotels - the same way as we welcomed Kenyan Indians shunned from their homeland; or that Lats are doing the farming jobs the Brits don't want the same way as the Irish gouged out our canals?!
We are a melting pot - and it's not something new - migration should be managed, but not stopped. We're an incredibly adaptable country - indeed we've already had a Jewish Prime Minister (a claim I don't think anywhere else has, save Israel?) and we were the first "Western" country to have a female head of government - a darn sight earlier than the US - if things go according to plan over the pond in November.
Voting on something so complex as EU membership is not for the fainthearted and quite frankly, I believe we shouldn't even be having a referendum on it. And if Cameron had had the steely determination of Disraeli and the antipathy to vox popular of Thatcher, perhaps we wouldn't be in this bloody awful mess.
But we are, and I have confidence, although it a bit wobbly from time to time, that the UK people will speak with that shared determination of a once immigrant; will vote for a positive and future full of hope; will show the world, that while we sometimes need to think we're still as important as we once were, the UK now relishes its part in a shared future and a common project. A project that is the EU.
Whatever the outcome, change will come.
If the UK votes Leave, the flood gates of a torrent of mini-tsunamis affecting millions of people will ensue: indeed affecting billions of people around the world. If they vote to Remain, the UK will be viewed with a certain amount of suspicion in European circles for putting the entire Union through the mill and a confident chest-puffing UK could demand more changes from Brussels.
The debate has been riddled with inaccuracies and political gerrymandering of incomparable deceit, but on the other side, are people like me being too idealistic?
Too idealistic to think that 70 years of peace in Europe is in no small way thanks to the EU and its forbears the ECSC and EEC? Too idealistic to think that the EU offers great developmental opportunities for former Soviet economies?
The EU is far from perfect - this is not the claim of those who support membership - and there are many things even the most ardent, Beethoven crooning Europhile would want changing. The response to the refugee and migrant crisis in the Mediterranean was late and lackluster - not to mention murderous; the common agricultural policy still needs much reform and gobbles up far too much of the EU budget; and the democratic deficit which is personified in the faceless bureaucrat based in Belgium, is tantamount to government by dictatorship.
But it gives me hope of how countries can work together; how there can be benefits for all; how centuries of conflict can be consigned to the history books and we move forward as one.
Idealistic? Yes, and there is nothing like it on earth - no other club or group comes close to what the EU has achieved since its nascent founding back in 1956.
This is not a zero sum game, either. By being part of the EU, we don't cut off trading opportunities with the BRICs, of NAFTA or other big entities - in fact it's made easier by the sheer weight of the EU-28 members. We can negotiate harder as 500m people as opposed to if the UK were alone - a mere 65m - barely 10% the size.
We should change from within...we certainly can't change from the outside, can we?!
The UK is now a post-imperial marvel; a place so rich in diversity that London has a Muslim mayor, we have black Lords in the House and chicken tikka is the country's best loved dish. Why should we over-heat now that Poles are fixing our boilers - the same way Caribbean men were asked to drive our buses; or that Romanians are staffing our hotels - the same way as we welcomed Kenyan Indians shunned from their homeland; or that Lats are doing the farming jobs the Brits don't want the same way as the Irish gouged out our canals?!
We are a melting pot - and it's not something new - migration should be managed, but not stopped. We're an incredibly adaptable country - indeed we've already had a Jewish Prime Minister (a claim I don't think anywhere else has, save Israel?) and we were the first "Western" country to have a female head of government - a darn sight earlier than the US - if things go according to plan over the pond in November.
Voting on something so complex as EU membership is not for the fainthearted and quite frankly, I believe we shouldn't even be having a referendum on it. And if Cameron had had the steely determination of Disraeli and the antipathy to vox popular of Thatcher, perhaps we wouldn't be in this bloody awful mess.
But we are, and I have confidence, although it a bit wobbly from time to time, that the UK people will speak with that shared determination of a once immigrant; will vote for a positive and future full of hope; will show the world, that while we sometimes need to think we're still as important as we once were, the UK now relishes its part in a shared future and a common project. A project that is the EU.
