Unsurprisingly, I respectfully disagree with Damiano Sogaro’s article accusing me of ‘misrepresenting’ the EU. I hope that we can soon debate the details, including his support for the European Arrest Warrant, which I believe deprives citizens of their habeas corpus right to plead against extradition in a British court. In the meantime, and in the spirit of avoiding misrepresentation, I would appreciate it if his ‘Cambridge for Europe’ campaign could stop talking about leaving ‘Europe’ – as if we would somehow drift away from the continent of 50 countries, of whom only 28 are in political union. I am also very much ‘for Europe’ – but I’m for greater democracy too. It’s a word which gets bandied about a lot, but it's the moral crux of this debate.

But ‘ah!’ some say, ‘having a referendum shows being in the EU is democratic!’ Although, yes, that is ‘democracy’, that logic would equally justify electing someone to serve as dictator for life, or having a world super-state government, so long as we each get a vote.  Democracy is fundamentally about putting as much power as possible in people’s own hands – because we each deserve the chance to shape our future. Even if the EU were just the European Parliament without the unelected Commission, where the power really lies, leaving would still be better. It may be fashionable to decry ‘nationalism’, but fundamentally a nation is a cultural and political community built on a shared sense of respect for, and responsibility to, each other, and we should celebrate that. I don’t believe people living thousands of miles away should have a say in decisions affecting my life any more than I should have a say in decisions affecting theirs. One size need not fit all. When you dilute democracy down to such a large, disparate electorate individual votes become almost meaningless.

When votes do have meaning though, democracy has a wonderful levelling effect – it is the greatest expression of equality there is; and that is why many at the top feel threatened by it. The more distant and unaccountable decision making is, the easier it is for the rich and powerful to influence it. That’s why big businesses love Brussels, why there are 30,000 lobbyists there according to The Guardian, and why Goldman Sachs is bankrolling the Remain campaign; they love being able to lobby a single body to make regulation across 28 countries favourable to them. What could be a clearer example of crony capitalism than TTIP, the EU-US trade deal, being negotiated in secret but with the involvement of big businesses? Or indeed laws which forbid the re-nationalisation of the railways? Multi-national corporations don’t even mind the mountains of red tape; they can afford top lawyers to navigate over 13 million words of EU business regulations, while small- and medium-sized competitors are crushed under its weight.

Most importantly, though, democracy makes us better people. This line we hear about the EU – which has in any case only been a political union since 1992 – somehow preventing war since 1945 is nonsense; no two established liberal democracies have fought each other for 200 years, and there’s a reason for that. The more say you give people in politics through a democratic process, the more they stay informed and engage with debates to develop nuanced, rational, and compassionate views.  If a supranational institution gives a nation no power to remove members of its executive body, and only 10 per cent of the seats in its Parliament, how can it expect citizens of that nation to feel anything other than alienated from the decisions it makes? Westminster is not perfect but it is a hell of a lot more democratic and connected to our lives than the EU is. And it could also serve us better if it weren’t sending £19bn a year to Brussels, of which we only get back less than £11bn – the allocation of which the EU determines.

I cannot understand how anyone who calls themselves progressive can support an institution which imposes horrific austerity on the people of Greece whilst squandering £130 million each month on moving from Brussels to Strasbourg for four days – to say nothing of the £536 million annual PR budget, including for EU-themed colouring books. It’s not just ridiculous – it’s immoral, and, as I argued a fortnight ago, beyond reform.

Yes, the economic benefits a Brexit would bring us are important, but the fundamental choice we will face on June 23rd is not about our bank balance; it is about the character of our nation. Anyone who argues that if we take back control from the EU we’ll choose to reduce funding for science, shut out immigrants, and retreat into isolationism has a much dimmer view of their compatriots than I do. The abdication of the responsibilities of self-government by contracting out key decisions betrays a profoundly elitist distrust of the British people. To build a better country and lead better lives we must move forward together, invigorated by the spirit of democracy – as a friend, but not a member of the EU.