READERS of this column can have no doubt that I am a Brexiter. None more so. The now looming referendum is the vote of all our lifetimes. Despite everything else that has been placed in the scales – employment (or unemployment), immigration, house prices, the future of the NHS, support for the creative arts, and on and on infinitum, usually ever more far-fetched - the central issue is whether we wish to remain a self- governing nation.

If Australia, Canada, New Zealand, a trio of our former colonies, can manage it, why can’t we? Of course, like them, we would co-operate on international issues. That is not the same as giving up sovereignty. In the 1975 referendum on staying in the “European Economic Community” (aka the Common Market), Harold Wilson’s government promised: “There will be no loss of sovereignty.” It has to be telling that this time the Remain camp has scarcely mentioned sovereignty. The biggest failure of the Brexit side is to have let them get away with it. Presumably its leaders believe that self-government isn’t of immediate-enough concern for the public.

For its part, the Government has been ruthless in its determination keep Britain in the EU. First there was that £9m leaflet campaign, just before spending curbs that would have banned it kicked in. Most recently David Cameron chose to invoke Winston Churchill when arguing that the EU had been crucial to peace in Western Europe since 1945.

But Mr Cameron is sure to know that, while it is true that Churchill did call, in 1946, for a “United States of Europe,” it is clear he did not envisage Britain being part of it. In 1950 he greeted moves to form the European Iron and Steel Federation, the improbable infant EU, by asking: “Would you agree to a supranational authority which has the power to tell Britain not to cut any more coal or make any more steel? Without hesitation, No.”

Is it not interesting that while the EU has stretched its tentacles into virtually every aspect of our lives, its policies have very recently pushed our steel industry towards extinction – after similarly wrecking the fishing industry? So are you going to buy the propaganda that virtually every remaining job depends on us being bound – for what will be forever - to the EU?

RELATED matter - maybe. Many of you will recall VE day – May 8, 1945. What would be in every street? A Union Jack. More likely many. The national flag would also be draped from window sills whenever a serviceman, or woman, came home. Now fast forward 71 years – May 2016. A refuse truck emblazoned with the Union flag has been taken off the streets of Brighton and Hove because the council fears it could be viewed as support for Brexit. Would you ever have imagined there could come such a dismal day?

Welcome news is that the First World War conscientious objectors’ inscriptions in Richmond Castle are to protected from water damage. But, really, this £365,000 English Heritage project shouldn’t be necessary. Work for exactly the same purpose was carried out 25 years ago. And the authorities had dallied for more than 20 years before that, after the (deeply moving) graffiti had first attracted wide attention.