Mal Fletcher gives a balanced overview.

Mal Fletcher

'It is the heart always that sees before the head can see,' wrote Thomas Carlyle.

I don't know how Thomas Carlyle, a gifted social commentator, would have voted in the forthcoming British referendum on EU membership. Perhaps, being a Scot, he might immediately have made up his mind to stay.

If so, he would have been in the minority among UK voters, according to a new poll released by YouGov. It suggests that 45 per cent of people will vote to leave the EU, compared with 36 per cent who favour remaining.

If the 'don't knows' in the survey are excluded, a full 56 per cent favour waving goodbye to the EU. This despite Prime Minister Cameron's assurances that he can wrest a better deal for Britain from the hands of the EU.

Perhaps closer to the referendum - a date has not yet been fixed - people will opt to stay with what they know, after all, rather than going it alone. But recent problems within the Eurozone and terribly mixed messages about migration will add new levels of uncertainty about whether the status quo is sustainable anyway.

For my part, on the question of whether Britian should remain in the EU, the heart says a resounding 'yes', but the mind's not so sure.

Even without Europe, I'd have dual citizenship. I'm proud of being both British and Australian. As it happens, however, I'm also blessed to be European and in my heart of hearts I'm glad of it.

I'm glad not just because I love Europe's unique and rich mix of cultures and history. I'm pleased because there are clear benefits attached to living within a trans-national union like the EU.

I lived in Denmark for ten years and have lived in the UK for twelve. I've travelled and worked extensively across the EU throughout that time. I like so many others have seen firsthand the benefits in terms of travel, trade and the easy exchange of ideas and technologies.

On the travel front alone, my life and that of millions of others would have been so much more difficult had Europe remained as it once was - a disparate cluster of nation-states all-too-often divided by mutual suspicion and antagonism.

Throughout Europe's history, feelings of cross-border antipathy have so often boiled over into all-out confrontation.

The original architects of the EU foresaw a time when Europeans - and their political masters - might share so much in common that going to war would be recognised as, at the very least, counter-productive.

After Europe had led the world into two horrendous worldwide conflagrations, this was an attractive proposition.

The European Coal and Steel Community, instituted by the Treaty of Paris in 1951, eventually gave way to a pact that covered more than trade alone.