I CAN’T avoid it any longer. This is my two pennyworth on Europe.

We are all being conned and treated as imbeciles by those who depend on our votes to keep them in power. I’m not talking about whether we stay in the EC or not, but about the farce that the whole debate has now become. It demonstrates the thinly veiled contempt in which voters are now held by the professional political classes.

Apparently, if we leave, my house will drop by one-fifth in value, half-amillion jobs will be lost and our coastal towns will be overrun with refugees as the French authorities evict them from camps in Calais. I wasn’t aware that we manufactured anything anymore (doesn’t it all come from China?) but apparently we do – and everything we make will be banned from Europe or the USA or carry prohibitive tariffs. Docklands will become a no-go wasteland with tumbleweeds drifting down deserted streets as international companies and financial institutions, like the banks to whom we all owe so much, decamp to mainland Europe.

But if we stay I will continue to live in penury and contribute more than I earn each year to faceless Euroreaucrats living despotic lives at my expense. Immigration will be uncurbed and I will have to take my place at the back of every queue while unemployed scroungers, lured here by stories of a benefits system paved with gold, from countless as yet undiscovered Eastern European countries, arrive here by the shipload, stealing jobs, education and healthcare. The money wasted on Brussels, could apparently rescue the health service, pay junior doctors a king’s ransom, give schools more pencils than they could ever dream of, and the military more toys to play with than a teenager on Black Ops. A vote to stay in Europe, we have been told, is a vote for the sort of tyranny that Napoleon and Hitler failed to impose on us by force.

Business leaders are lining up on both sides of the debate, warning employees and workers of the Armageddon that awaits them if they make the wrong decision.

This fearmongering and hyperbole that characterises both sides of the campaign is contemptible. It is shameful to see two ex-Etonians continuing their playground squabbles, fighting for party supremacy in public at the expense of informed debate.

For us to be able to make a decision with such far reaching consequences for our children’s children we deserve to be treated with more respect. So full marks to the cathedral for organising a debate on June 15, refreshingly free from the taint of self-serving politicians with speakers who seem to know something about the subject. 900 years after Magna Carta and the Church is still knocking political heads together…