By David Broucher, Former British Ambassador to the Czech Republic

We’re seeing now that for many young people in this country the EU is not just an abstract idea to do with markets and trade. It’s something that connects them with their neighbours, enhances their lives and allows them to see a wider horizon.

I know this feeling well.  In the 1980s, Greece, Spain and Portugal joined the European Communities. As a junior diplomat in London I worked on the details.  In Bonn in the 1990s I saw the end of Communism and the birth of the EU.  Later, at the British Embassy in Prague, I helped the Czechs prepare to join.  After leaving the Diplomatic Service I worked with the President of Romania on his country’s accession and later gave advice and assistance to Croatia.  The photo shows me in Brussels with a delegation of civil servants from Bosnia.  I remember talking to two friends, a Christian and a Moslem. They told me they were united in their aspiration for a European future.

All of these countries had one thing in common. They had escaped from a dark past and saw the EU not, as some cynics think, as a cash cow that would give them a hand out, but as a beacon of hope for a better future, based on European values of tolerance, liberty and humanity. My wife, who is Romanian, describes the experience of joining as being like opening a window and getting a breath of fresh air.

Behind the scenes we British worked hard to achieve this result.  The fact that it succeeded was largely down to our insistence that the EU should not be Fortress Europe but should have a mission to bring democracy, peace and freedom to a wider world.  We certainly saw it as a way of healing the legacy of dictatorship, be it fascist or communist, and building peace in the war-torn Balkans. We did not perceive this as conflicting with our British identity. We were proud to be both British and European.

Now Britain is going in the opposite direction, not the Open Window but the closed door. Like me many people feel a sense of real loss, as though something is being taken away from them.  And indeed it is, for they will lose European citizenship.  No doubt we shall be told that we can still travel in Europe, but we shall no longer be fully at home there, and without wishing to exaggerate the importance of this, it hurts because it was inflicted by a campaign of lies for base and ignoble reasons, and it is totally unnecessary.

I know that many of my former colleagues will scoff at this.  I ask them to reflect on how the EU has helped to calm ancient animosities in Northern Ireland, just as it did on the Franco German border, between Austria and Italy and between Germany and its nine neighbours.  By reducing the salience of borders and national identities in Europe, it has enabled different communities to live together in harmony.  It achieves on a wider scale the same balance as is seen in other countries that contain two or more different traditions: Canada, Switzerland, and Belgium – and yes, the UK too, since we are four in one.  It’s a difficult balance, and it relies not on flags or anthems, but on strong institutions

This is why when Alyn Smith, a Scottish MP, stood up in the European Parliament yesterday and told them that Scotland had not let the EU down and that the EU should not let Scotland down, I cheered.  I’m not Scottish, but I felt that he was speaking not just for Scotland but for the whole of the UK.

So I’m not giving up on the EU.  There are 16 million of us, and we’re not going away.  The result of the referendum was unexpected.  We lost because large swathes of England felt that they were not sharing in the nation’s prosperity. That was not the EU’s doing, indeed one of the ironies was to discover how much the EU spends in places like Wales and Cornwall that voted Leave and are now worried about losing that money.  The problems of Britain were not made in Brussels but in London, and immigration was not a sign of failure but of success.

People came here to work because our economy was expanding and they thought we were an open, fair and welcoming society.  Now they are discovering their mistake.  We see outbreaks of racist violent on our streets, the demons released by a foul, nationalist campaign. This is not the Britain I aspire to live in. I call upon Members of Parliament to assert their authority across party boundaries, to come together and look hard at what is happening.  If they do not, I fear it will tear our country apart.

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