It has been greatly frustrating to observe how many of the arguments laid at the door of the EU (and used by the Leave campaign over the past few weeks) have nothing to do with Europe. From the declining fishing industry to job insecurity, it seems the EU has become the fall guy for Britain’s own home grown problems, and for this gap between perception and reality we may be leaving the EU today.

Take immigration, the most powerfully deployed argument against EU membership.

There is no question as to whether immigration has been good or bad for the UK economy. The facts tell their own story: OECD figures show immigration has accounted for half of UK GDP growth since 2005. Without it, we would be a poorer country, economically and culturally.

However, as the Brexit debate has taught us, debates are not about facts. They are about feelings. And in the case of immigration, they are about feelings and concerns our parties have ignored. Although a quarter of people say immigration is the single most important issue facing the country today, for the past ten years, our main political parties have been silent on it. Some people are worried about their jobs and the way in which their communities are changing. This is not racist, but our parties have treated it as such and won’t go near discussions on it. Into this silence has crept hyperbole and ignorance. In 2011, 12% of the UK was born outside it. But in the absence of public debate or information on the issue, British people think it is 24%.

Our parties’ failure to talk about continued immigration is not the fault of the EU. And neither would leaving the EU solve it. Whether we leave or remain, immigration has already changed the face of the UK. By 2050, 30% of the UK will be made up of ethnic minorities. And for reasons related to the economy (and a shortage of teachers, nurses and other key professionals) immigration to the UK will continue, whatever the outcome of the vote today.

Head versus the heart

Many of the arguments for the EU are arguments of the head: access to the single market, shared security and intelligence, the free movement of people for jobs and employment. By contrast, the arguments for Brexit are simpler appeals to the heart: a return to democracy (some might say a country with a hereditary monarchy and a House of Lords isn’t all that democratic, but let’s not split hairs), the sovereignty of British law, death to a bloated bureaucracy. These are simple messages: easy to understand and easy to communicate to a public tired and wary of statistics.

Far harder the job of the Remain campaign to explain how notions of sovereignty and democracy are more subtle than this. That ‘EU law’ is actually UK-made law and that 98% of the laws passed in the European Parliament since 1999 have been voted through with a ‘yes please’ by the UK.

How does one explain that 44% of our exports go to the EU, need to be compliant with EU law, and would continue to have to be compliant with EU law, even if we left? That bloated EU bureaucrats have fought for and given us (in no particular order) maternity and paternity rights, a statutory right to 4 weeks of paid leave a year, passed Directives on clean water and air, lowered airline fees and phone roaming charges and poured £8 billion in investment into our poorest regions. The arguments for the EU are not simple, but they reflect the reality of our world – complicated and in need of some explanation. By contrast, yes, the arguments for Brexit are simple, but they distort reality – harking back to an England that never was, with a promise of absolute sovereignty and closed borders that cannot exist in a world of globalisation and openness.

We cannot, and should not, turn the clock back. In this way, a vote for the EU is a vote for the heart, as well as the head. A vote that recognises where we have come from, who we want to be and how we want to be seen in the world. The EU in its infancy was created in order to prevent a third world war and it is telling that after having spent most of the 17^th, 18^th, 19^th and 20^th centuries trying to kill each other, since the EU’s creation the closest we have come to bloodshed against our European neighbours has been on the football field.

Perceptions matter. But so does truth. And the truth is the EU debate isn’t a debate about the EU. It’s about us. It’s about the British. It is time to sort out our own house and leave the EU out of it. It is time to use our heads in this debate and vote.