I still harbour a dream of humanity one day transcending arbitrary geographical barriers and working as one. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could forget our differences and came closer. That way, we could better organise ourselves: we could coordinate who gets what resources on a worldwide scale more easily. as Marx put it, ”from each according to ability, to each according to need.” I don’t mean getting too close: human diversity, and the uniqueness of each culture, must be cherished. Nor do I mean establishing a single world state, whose political structure and civil service, as I wrote here, would have to be so big and complex that it would be unmanageable. I just want humanity to take a more cooperative, less adversarial stance; to start seeing ourselves in terms of a species rather as members of distinct nation states. The world should be a place where everyone can contribute and has a voice irrespective of where you come from. Is that such a naive dream?

To me, the EU is working towards that goal. It’s about building a single framework we can all live under. Of course, outists do not share that goal: they seek a disunited, deregulated system where those who have are allowed to lord it over those who have not. Instead of cooperation and compromise, they value rivalry, greed and selfishness. Vote out, and this country becomes their playground. We’d become an irrelevant little island off north-west europe, where xenophobia is normalised, the welfare state is torn to shreds and the most extreme, perverse form of capitalism is allowed to dominate. I hope with all my heart that that does not happen.