An Englishman whose forebears came from the continent, I live in Belgium and am married to an Italian. I consider myself a quintessential European. A British and then European civil servant for most of his working life, I believe that the EU’s common legal basis and closely integrated economy offer the best model to safeguard democratic governance and the advances in human rights which have been achieved since the second World War, at a time of resurgent nativism and right wing political movements which instrumentalise it. I am the author of the 2014 novel “A Short History of England 2020-2089” which foreshadows some of the issues raised in this think piece.