IT is surely to be regretted that the EU argument has got stuck in the tiny groove of cash and economics, when the vision and scope is so much more exciting.

Economism is short-term while the broad culture and adherences of the European people’s together will grow and expand for centuries to come.

Just as there can now be no more wars between EU countries – after a thousand years of strife – so should we relish our freedom to move freely from the fjords to the Mediterranean, to see both the Acropolis and the northern lights as somehow our own.

I daily relish the idea that Ibsen, Cervantes, Michelangelo, Beethoven, and Socrates are as much part of my own European legacy as Shakespeare, the Beatles, Judi Dench and Jane Austen.

Hard to believe, but every week I think, wow, these are my very own men and women, the finest concentration of brilliance in the world.

The EU is the most civilised voluntary union of nations and cultures in the history of humanity. I am proud to be a Lancastrian, an Oxford man by adoption, a Briton, but, most excitingly of all, a European.

What a great treasure we have in store for those who will follow us.

Ian Flintoff
Oxford