We aren't engaged in a referendum, we are engaged in a civil war

It is fairly clear that this referendum has become less and less about the EU and more about a struggle between two ideas of what we want The United Kingdom to be. We are in fact engaged less in a democratic discussion about the merits or otherwise of Europe and more in a protracted, non-violent (until yesterday), civil war about the direction that we as a society wish to go. Whoever wins this gets to choose the direction of travel.

As with all tipping points, this "war" represents a fork in the road. If Boris, Farage and Brexit win we turn hard right and disappear down an un-charted track to pursue an agenda of isolationism, anti-immigration and possibly trade with the people who live in the woods - but only if we can find them. They say it's about engaging with the outside world but frankly, for the most part, they are lying. They are set on a course and a very dangerous one indeed. One that will get us entangled in the thicket while kidding ourselves that at least we have 'rid ourselves of that expensive and undemocratic tarmac' that gave us the chance to turn off it in the first place.

Brexiteers are like the adventurers who set out in the 16th Century in search of the mythical golden city of Eldorado. They have convinced their followers that there is a "better" place out there. One of fabulous riches, which will instantly solve all the problems of the modern Britain that they appear to hate so very much.

It's a reckless endeavour and one that anybody with an iota of sense could see is doomed from the start. Still, if they want to go on alone well fine. Perhaps we could loan them an island somewhere and let them create their thatched cottage and no foreigners idyll. We could give them Ascension perhaps and they could shout their angry platitudes at the fish.

If, on the other hand, Remain wins - we get to stay on the open road. The great highway drifting on. It has its dangers and its flaws yes - a little dull yes and we have to pay the toll every now and then - but it's broad and full of promise and rich with opportunity.

What do you want from life? I can tell you what I want. I want my kids to be happy and safe and grow up in a prosperous and progressive and contented world. There are other things I want sure - that book deal - a bigger car - the odd cigar and a cellar stuffed with fine wine - but the thing that matters to me most is that which I want for my children and all of our children's futures.  And for that to happen we need these spits of land on which we live to prosper and be contented and decent liberal places.

Buried just beneath the veneer of patriotism in the Brexiteer narrative is a deep and dangerous loathing of progress. Progress is what has made our very species thrive. It is what has made Britain such a great place to live. The UK of today, as I have said so many times, is far better than that of the past. There is not a single country in the history of this world that has improved itself by giving into the darkness of hate and prejudice and that, frankly, is the foe we are fighting. To win this civil war we must vote Remain.

Sun Tzu and the Art of Brexit - a Who's Who for the Undecided Voter

Dear Undecided Voter

I hate open letters don't you? They seem a little smug and a little patronising and if you're already feeling patronised by my opening sentence well that is nothing compared to the arguments being foisted on us all from both sides in the Brexit debate. We are told by the Brexit crowd that if we Remain we will have our NHS privatised or that we'll be overrun by billions of Muslamic jihadists intent on enslaving us under Sharia Law or even - a new one on me today - be dragged into a third world war. Conversely, Remainians have argued that if we Leave our economy will collapse, Scotland will quit the UK, that we will be eaten by giant jelly fish, that our babies will be privatised and that our farming industry will cease to exist and be over-run with wolves. 

I exaggerate of course. But not by that much. Project Fear works both ways.

Disclaimer: I'm for Remain and the reason for that is simple. I believe in Unions. I believe that we work better in common enterprise with our friends and neighbours. I believe in the Union of Great Britain and the European Union for exactly the same reasons. Both have given us peace, prosperity, security and far more opportunity than if we had stayed on the fringes of things staring at our navels. Unions work. We didn't win WW2 or WW1 alone - we won them in partnership with our allies. The United States is a Union. They haven't done badly, have they?

Anyway, those arguments are all for another day, because when it boils down to it, many undecided voters will probably make their judgements for good or bad based on nothing more than on who backs which side. So, shall we take a look?

The Remain camp is, I regret to say, a little worthy and dull. A man who used to run Marks and Spencer, The Bank of England, The Treasury, The IMF, OECD, David Cameron, the Labour party, the Lib Dems, Greens, all our key allies, NATO, The US President, The US State department, the British Military Top Brass, Peter Mandelson and Emma Thompson have all fairly unanimously argued that leaving the EU would damage our global reputation and economy. These guys might well be among the most important institutions (and Emma Thompson is undeniably a key UK institution) affecting our nation and its security but they're putting the case in fairly beige terms and what Stay lacks is sex appeal and colour.

Not an accusation that could be levelled at the so-called Brexiteers. Leave is like a psychedelic smorgasbord of talents. Sure, there is the fairly overwhelming support for it in the mainstream media. The Daily Mail, The Sun, The Times and The Express and Telegraph are all clearly Leave or Leave curious but for every dull Simon Heffer article it also offers some of the most colourful, eccentric and yes enigmatic folks in public life: Boris Johnson, Winston Mckenzie, potty Kate Hoey, Michael Gove (OK not Michael Gove), the disgraced former Defence Minister Liam Fox and serial idiot Gorgeous George Galloway. Oh yes and that nice Mr Farage.

If "The Brexiteers" was a 1970s British sex romp comedy, you might even pop along and watch it.  I don't particularly like those people and would question Johnson's motives in particular, but they are not wholly unsavoury characters and I can and do understand their appeal. But they're not all mad swivel eyed loons.

Oh yes, that brings me to the mad swivel eyed loons.

Both sides have them, but Leave has them in such abundance that there's practically a two for one offer going on. Where to start? The Neo-Nazi  Britain First that spends much of its time co-opting the memory of the murdered soldier Lee Rigby, despite his family pleading with them not to. Or the BNP. Remember them? Or that lovely Marine Le Pen and her Front National party. Or those delightful rape apologists at The Socialist Workers Party. Or the EDL. Or the sane and rational David Icke - who wants to quit the Illuminati Bilderberg led EU and have British lizards running our affairs instead. Or The English Nationalists. Or Greece's thuggish Golden Dawn. And then - most worryingly of all, in my opinion at least, Vladimir Putin and his considerable propaganda machine. Leave campaigner and part time cat George Galloway is in fact a paid employee of the Russian State and thus never criticises it. Why does Mr Putin want Brexit? Simple. Because a stable and successful EU is perceived as a threat to his muscle flexing and regional ambitions. He would like nothing more than the collapse of Europe.  Brexit would do Putin a favour.

And finally and most interestingly of all - there are the other Brexiteers - lurking in the shadows. The ones who you have probably never heard of. The rich boys and free marketeers - the real engines behind this referendum. Chief amongst these is the mysterious "Taxpayers Alliance".  An anti-NHS, anti government, anti minimum wage and workers rights, low tax super rich 'campaigning group' of right wing entrepreneurs funded by billionaire Monaco dwelling, Times Rich List bothering Peter Cruddas. Why would a super rich individual who spends most of his time in Monte Carlo and Antibes be concerned about "British sovereignty?" Curious.  Vote Leave's Director Matthew Elliott is the former head of this group and if you are a rich entrepreneur with off shore accounts and a palace on the Riviera, you might, quite rightly agree with their agenda. If you are not, then frankly these people are no more your friends than Vladimir Putin or Marine Le Pen - but worryingly - and it does genuinely worry me - most people who plan to vote Brexit are blissfully unaware of the people behind it. The agenda is far from transparent.

In the Art of War, Sun Tzu writes that "if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in battle." I would add that as the 23rd of June approaches, it is equally important to "know your friends." 

We failed to get rid of Rhodes so let's pulverise Parliament Square instead.

Demands to remove the statue of racist Empire Builder Cecil Rhodes have fallen at the second hurdle, disappointing many of those who wish to whitewash, edit and censor our history - but don't worry! London alone is still dotted with statues of people who really don't deserve to be there in modern Britain. Let me take you by the wrecking ball and lead you around Parliament Square. 

Jan Smuts. Smuts by name, tosser by nature. PM of South Africa twice. A vocal supporter of apartheid in its earliest form with views on race and segregation that might make even Britain First blush. Smite Smuts now.

David Lloyd-George. WW1 Prime Minister and womaniser who helped draft the Versailles Treaty which led inexorably to the terrible sequel. When that war came he was chief among those wishing to appease that nice Mr Hitler, who he called "The George Washington of Germany." Clearly sulking when nobody asked him to save the nation a second time against his BFF, his general pessimism and unpatriotic beastliness in the early days of the Second War led to Churchill calling him The British Petain. Liquefy Lloyd-George!

Abraham Lincoln. Emancipator of slaves. Great American hero right? WRONG! Lincoln was more concerned with economic realities than the cruelties of slavery - his taking up of the black cause was more to do with self promotion, political expediency and a place in the history books than pretty much anything else. Also a rabidly pro-colonisation, segregationist who wanted to build an American Empire in South America. Atomise Abe!

Robert Peel. Created the Metropolitan Police to crush honest criminals going about their daily criminality. British PM during the Irish Potato Famine and thus indirectly responsible for many of Sinead O'Connor's post "nothing Compares 2 U" work. Murdering scum! Pulverise Peel.

George Canning. Prime Minister. First seat was a rotten borough and the bad start just kept getting worse. Didn't like the French. Or liberty. Attacked and destroyed Copenhagen. Robbed India of its wealth. And as for his views on the Scots ..... well put it this way - he wouldn't get a Christmas card from Nicola Sturgeon. Can Canning!

14th Earl Derby - Tory! Went to Eton! Tory SCUM! Dynamite Derby!

Gandhi - an absolute bastard to his son. Wrote nice letters to Hitler. Religious nut-case. Did nothing at all for the beef industry. Grind up Gandhi!

Nelson Mandela? Terrorist! Encouraged the Spice Girls. Sent Christmas cards to Gaddafi. Er..... NEXT!

Finally. The real villain of the piece. Responsible for the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children in WW2. He gassed the Kurds and the Russians. In fact he was a long term and enthusiastic advocate of chemical warfare. He could be anti-semitic. He was at the helm and actively fought to maintain a huge and unethical Empire. He blew up the French navy. He said rude things about Muslims. Racist! He nearly converted to Islam. Quisling! He hated the idea of a European Union. Kipper! He longed for a European Union. Leftard! His son was an alcoholic. He ruined Simon Ward's nascent acting career, he kept changing sides politically and he had a macaw (animal abuser) which he taught to swear. He also oversaw the burning of a masterful painting by Graham Sutherland of one of our greatest Prime Ministers, so you can add vandalism to the list. 

Thing is. Apart from the odd monument honouring "War Animals" we don't put up many statues nowadays and I for one think there's a good reason for that. Statues are there to urge respect for state appointed paragons and as Brecht says in Galilleo "unhappy the land that is in need of heroes." Human beings who reach great office are not superheroes, they are people lost in time. As our democracy has matured we have come instinctively to realise that. Time moves on and judgement quite rightly alters with it, but if we seek to exorcise the past, or blow it up, or melt it down we end up with a sanitised and impoverished present. That Santayana epithet:

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"

is a bit of a cliche, but like many great cliches it is true.

Bowie and Me. A sort of love story.

In the late seventies my older sister bought the Bowie compilation album ChangesOne and played it until the grooves on the record ran shallow. My musical influences had not extended much beyond Ken Dodd and Pinky and Perky at this point, but I was immediately smitten. His voice seemed to come from a different planet and the picture of him radiated a sort of warm, handsome cool that had echoes of the Hollywood greats - while at the same time being slightly unsettling - a kind of menacing handsome. Those mismatched eyes, the too thin cheekbones, the faraway look. When my sister got tired of the record, as teenage girls are wont to do, I lifted it off her and have played it ever since. If you listen to those songs now, from the warm buzz of the title track to the crazyweird John I'm Only Dancing and the sublime rock and roll number Suffragette City, you get a seminar, not just in the otherworldliness of early Bowie but of his incredible eclectic range and famed unwillingness to get pegged down. The distance between Hunky Dory and Golden Years is just five years, but in musical terms it outstrips anything most pop artists achieve in a lifetime of writing.

As I grew up and the eighties broke, Bowie went mainstream. I didn't mind. I was fourteen when Let's Dance came out and suddenly David was cool and other boys views matter when you're fourteen. Alongside the contemporary releases I began to build up a collection of his back catalogue and sheltered in my boarding school bedsit received an education, courtesy of my record player, that I was most certainly not getting in the classroom. Those bizarre and brilliant Berlin records. Low. Heroes. Hard work at first - especially if everyone else is listening to Wham - but ultimately so much more rewarding. Then Lodger with its yaaaassssaaaasssin world music influences. The soul cool of Young Americans. And with Bowie you didn't just get the music. You got film, poetry, art - the man was a polymath. I learned about Andy Warhol from him. And Laurens Van der Post. And Nicolas Roeg. And Egon Schiele. And Eno. And Philip Glass. And that men could wear dresses. And that Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd were better than what came after. And that you didn't have to give the public what they wanted. And that working class popstars from Bromley could produce lines of poetry every bit as good as Byron or Edgar Allen Poe:

"We passed upon the stair, we spoke of was and when

Although I wasn't there, he said I was his friend

Which came as some surprise

I spoke into his eyes

I thought you died, a long, long time ago."

Fashions came and fashions went and his stock grew with time and not everything he did was brilliant but you could never accuse Bowie of being dull or standing still. He was always interesting. Challenging. Changing. Other heroes faded, David never did. He was never irrelevant.

There's a great line in Kooks where Bowie, addressing his young son Zowie, now Duncan, sings:

"And if the homework brings you down, then we'll throw it on the fire and take the car downtown."

I remember my friend Andy Chappell and I listening to that in our cold Northamptonshire boarding school and him saying to me "If I ever have a son and everything gets too much, I'm going to sing that to him." I don't know if Andy ever did, but last week when my 11 year old found his homework too much I did - and we did - and as we did we listened to Blackstar on the CD player and my son said: "The thing with Bowie is - that the more you listen - the better he gets." 

So thank you David. Thank you for entertaining me and my family. Thank you for holding my hand through broken hearts and teenage angst and failed projects and new horizons. Thank you for educating me, for thrilling me, for teaching me about art and film and music and what it is to be young and what it is to grow old. Thank you for the wayward turns and the fashion tips.Thank you for Blackstar and Rock and Roll Suicide and Win and China Girl and Julie and V2 Schneider and yes - even the Laughing Gnome. You have been much more than the soundtrack to my life and - you have been an inspiration.