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Mr Appleby, the world if we leave the EU will go on being pretty much the same sort of place as it is now, and as it was before we joined. If you think that “peace” (just to focus on that) has been the gift of the EU, you need to refresh your memory as to the role of NATO during the last 60-odd years. If any Union is to be credited with the relative peace we've enjoyed during that time it is the United States of America. The “European” project was indeed launched partly with a view of preventing further conflict between Germany and France; yet such conflict had already become inconceivable due to the overshadowing threat of Soviet Russia. In that sense the founding fathers, Monnet & Co, were applying a solution to a problem which had ceased to exist. As someone who has lived through most of the period in question, I struggle to imagine what “constitutional stability” you think it is that the EU has given Britain in our 40 years of membership. On the contrary, those years have been marked by repeated efforts to break up the United Kingdom.