I HAD a column half written on Thursday lunchtime, a spirited discussion of the democrat deficit, why the planet needs the EU, why I love our diverse, multicultural Britain - even some figures about Christchurch schools and why Chris Chope’s recent attempt to blame a shortage of places on migrants is not based in any sort of fact.

Then Jo Cox was killed, and all I can think is: what has happened to Britain?

I’m not going to make any assumptions about the gunman, what he may have shouted, his reported far right links or his suggested mental health issues.

But the sad truth is that we now live in a country where it's not inconceivable to think that a pro-refugee, pro-immigration MP could be killed by a person with far right links. Shocking, yes. Appalling, yes. But not out of the question.

Because this referendum has been dangerously poisonous. Neither side has been honest. Both sides have tried to convince us with ‘facts’ and ‘figures’, when the truth is we’re all intelligent enough to know that it’s a bit more complicated than that.

It's an important question, this EU one, that deserves a considered and reasoned debate. There's a case to be made over the democratic deficit. There's a case to be made about how we handle migration, and how we show people the benefits when the money those migrants contribute isn't spent on increasing services in the areas where they live. There's a case to be made for why clean air and energy and climate change are better tackled as a union than an island, and a need for discussion about farming and fishing. And in the Britain I thought I lived in, we'd have got that.

Instead, we've been encouraged to hate, revile, demonise, dehumanise, look scornfully on 'elites' and denounce all politicians we disagree with as unpatriotic liars.

Nigel Farage describes violence as 'the next step’ for people who think we’ve lost control of our borders. and stands grinning in front of a poster showing some the planet’s most desperate people as if they are to blame for the change in the world.

The Mail tells readers a lorry load of refugees from Iraq are in fact from Europe in a bid to convince people we’re at ‘breaking point’.

Boris Johnson uses arguments he admits to making up on the fly in support of a cause he doesn’t believe in because he thinks it will get him through the door of Number 10.

David Cameron, when asked by this paper's readers if he could see any positives to Brexit, said there were none. George Osborne threatens his so-called 'punishment budget'.

And all of that, over days and weeks and months, directs people’s anger and frustration onto people and places where it doesn’t belong. It legitimises it, gives it a focus.

But what happens, post-referendum, when everything is not magically transformed?

Because we won’t wake up on Friday in a 50s idyll where the young people have abandoned their Snapchat and their sexting for punting down a river or chasing hoops in the streets. We won’t suddenly be exempt from responsible fishing, or able to claim ownership of all the fish in Europe’s waters.

Britain’s builders will still be putting up retirement flats and student flats and £500k ‘family houses’ instead of homes a couple on the average wage can afford. Britain’s schools will still be fighting the inexorable creep of academisation that risks turning them into cash cows for anonymous businessmen.

Britain’s disabled people will still be losing their benefits. The NHS will still be struggling with under-funding and the drip-drip erosion of confidence in its staff by Jeremy Hunt.

Steel won’t suddenly be profitable again. George Osborne will still have outsourced one of the biggest government construction projects in a generation to the Chinese. Pensions and adult social care will still be the elephant in the room that we have no idea how to handle.

We'll still have immigration, possibly more of it, and the money those migrants put into the economy still won't be spent where they live. Low paid jobs won't suddenly become higher paid ones.

The crash will still have happened. Austerity will still have fallen on the wrong people. Philip Green and his ilk will still be around. The world will still be changing.

So what I want to say is this. On Thursday, go out and vote. Vote however you feel in your heart. But please, make your decision on facts, not rhetoric. Not from some vague notion that not being part of Europe will suddenly ‘make Britain great again’. Not because you think that ‘taking back control’ will suddenly mean an end to austerity.

Vote Brexit because you believe that the principle of sovereignty is more important than the long term benefits of collaboration. Vote Brexit if you are genuinely sure that your business will do better outside the EU. Vote Brexit because you’re anti-immigration, if you must - but not because you think migrants are to blame for our housing shortage or our government’s cuts.

Don’t vote Brexit because you're angry. Because the only thing we can say for sure is that nothing good can come of that, whoever ‘wins’.