We didn't fight for a united Europe to throw it all away on Brexit

Even if you could hermetically seal societies into absolutely sovereign entities, why would you want to? Borders are the scars of past conflicts

“It will not,” we are told, “be the end of the world.” Call me an incorrigible optimist, but I have always aimed a little higher than avoiding apocalypse.

By a narrow margin the forces of Brexit won the referendum. They did so by breaking electoral law, (with ongoing investigations into even more disturbing accusations), and by specifically promising that we would reap an instant dividend which we could spend on the NHS. They assured us that the negotiation of Brexit would be a simple process during which we would shed the more onerous aspects of EU membership and retain most of the advantages.

This has not happened. It is now clear that the benefits of Brexit are uncertain and deferred. The cost however, according to the government’s own impact assessments, is real, and imminent. We now face an expensive and disruptive Brexit, which was simply not what millions of us voted for.

There is nothing unusual or illegal about politicians over-promising during a campaign. Ordinarily we would lobby MPs, agitate for an early election and reverse the direction of government policy. But this is no ordinary decision – it is irrevocable.

We must be allowed a People's Vote. If the British public think the actual, rather than fanciful, costs and benefits of Brexit are still worth it, then away we go. No parliament can be bound by its predecessor, nor can any electorate. The Brexiteers who wished to overturn the 1975 referendum decision to remain in the common market said, with some justification, that the situation had changed, and we needed another say. Since June 2016 things have certainly changed, and we deserve a Final Say.

The shambolic Brexit negotiations have reinforced my conviction that we should remain. The pursuit of pure, distilled, weapons grade sovereignty is an intellectual exercise unsuited to actual implementation in a modern, interdependent world. Complex multi-national manufacturing processes, scientific research and supply chains require some regulatory and legal alignment. Even before that modern globalised economy – since the start of recorded history – the Channel has been a bridge rather than a barrier. Plague, pinot grigio, pepper, physics, Protestantism, the Plantagenets, pizza and printing presses all came from Europe. Our fates are linked whether we like it or not. We are better off arguing our case and trying to shape events in Brussels than trying to build that wall along the coast of Kent.

Even if you could hermetically seal societies into absolutely sovereign entities, why would you want to? The erosion of our village, tribal, regional, national and racial identities has been enormously positive. Breaking down the imaginary barriers that our ancestors placed across the world has been a blessing. Borders are the scars of past conflicts. It has to be a managed process. We could not suddenly remove all national borders, but looking for opportunities to reduce difference, harmonise the laws that govern us while pooling our resources and knowledge is one of the most exciting movements in human history.

Britain cannot solve global warming, over-fishing, deforestation, corporate tax evasion, plastics in the oceans or terrorism by itself. But working with our European neighbours, we might be able to move the dial. Europe has its faults, but as an experiment into whether we are able to willingly put aside the petty nationalism of our ancestors to build a better world, it has almost no parallel.

Winston Churchill believed that we could create a Europe in which people would “think as much of being a European as of belonging to their native land, and that without losing any part of their love and loyalty to their birthplace”. He dreamed of a time when we could travel freely across the once divided and atomised continent and say, “I am a citizen of this country too”. It is a dream of a man who had fought on the moonscape of the Western Front, had sat in countless interminable, gridlocked meetings of statesmen and diplomats, who saw the ruined cities that littered the continent, from Glasgow to Sebastopol, after the Second World War. It is a dream that is closer to realisation just half a century after his death that he can have imagined. Let’s fight to keep it alive.

Dan Snow is a British television presenter