The moment has arrived, dear reader: with the opinion polls suggesting that the outcome is too close to call, your vote could make a real, tangible difference to a historic referendum. My plea to you, if you are still undecided or have yet to cast your ballot, is to vote Leave with pride, confidence and hope.

My case is straightforward. Every so often, all successful countries need to reboot and modernise themselves, upgrading their institutions and refreshing their ruling classes to reflect changing realities. There have been several such inflection points since the Second World War: the election of the Labour government in 1945, our decision to join the Common Market in 1973, the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and Tony Blair’s triumph in 1997. This is another such pivotal moment: our first real opportunity to make Britain fit for a globalised, multi-polar world with opportunities and threats that were unthinkable even 20 years ago.

The difference this time is that our decision would have a far greater impact than merely within our own borders: if we vote leave, in a hundred years from now, historians will celebrate the referendum as the day that not just Britain but the whole of the Western world began to rediscover its core values and its self-belief. Other countries will follow our lead, and within a couple of years the UK will be at the head of a group of at least six or seven nations, all committed to free trade and economic integration but opposed to political centralisation.