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Dear Mr Cockshutt,

You are the epitome of sober reasonableness. I wholeheartedly recommend your sanity and temperance of language to other Remain supporters; and I don't doubt for a moment that, before casting your vote the June before last, you coolly weighed up the arguments on both sides and, without any "strong belief", gave the "law of unintended consequences" its full and proper weight.

But, you see, the debate (sic, I know!) is not really about a dispassionate assessment of economic possibilities. It's about whether one wants, ultimately, to owe one's allegiance and grant one's obedience to a pan-European bureaucracy or to the British state. That really is, and always has been the question - ever since 1958.

No doubt there is much to be said on both sides. But you'll appreciate (and so will Mr Appleby) that in questions of this kind a degree of passion - "volume" as you call it - can't be avoided. All I myself ask is that, on this website at least, it is kept within bounds and not allowed to descend into rabid name-calling, absurd exaggeration, and wilful misrepresentation of an opponent's case.

May I say that you, Mr Appleby and (I think) Mr Fearnley are shining examples of the Good Remainer?

Regards.

MM