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Former London Mayor Boris Johnson is one of the intellectual figureheads of the pro-Brexit movement. "Vote Leave, my friends!" he has told voters.
But Britain is a nation of "common sense", and the British are not people to duck responsiblity and flee difficult tasks. They will hopefully remember that when they vote on what their -- and Europe's -- future should look like on Thursday.
They have a choice between the 1950s retro-vision of splendid isolation as propagated by Johnson, UKIP leader Nigel Farage (pictured here) and Michael Gove, the secretary of state for justice, and a Europe that is more ready than ever for renewal. It should not be a difficult choice.
The central figure of the Remain campaign is also its greatest handicap. For years, British Prime Minister David Cameron acted like the most sceptical of Eurosceptics. He is a tactician, not a strategist, and he promised to hold the referendum because he wanted to get re-elected. His conversion to EU advocate was never credible, and the voters have noticed.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan -- the election of the Muslim politican is symbolic of a more modern Britain. But the Brexiteers want a different Britain and have turned the referendum into a plebescite against immigrants, against eastern Europeans and Turks. Those elements have made the Brexit camp's campaign even more anti-European than it already was.
British scepticism of the European Union has existed from the bloc's very early years. In the 1980s, the Margaret Thatcher decade, the Tories' mood turned against Europe. "We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at a European level with a European superstate," Thatcher famously stated. The statement was a battle cry for the Tories. "Europe" was no longer a mere free trade zone, as Thatcher wanted it, but an ideological project driven by the Germans and the French and steered by bureaucrats on the Continent.
The British army in Ver-sur-Mer in Normady during the D-Day invasion in 1944. The UK was never an enthusiastic member of the European club. Nevertheless, British history is irrevocably linked to the continent. Europe made Britain and Britain made Europe. Leaving the continent geographically is not an option.
This island is part of the global avant garde -- in human rights, in freedom movements, in culture and in its talent for being cool. The urge for freedom is a thread that runs through British history -- from the Magna Carta in the 13th century, when English barons cheekily wrested their rights from the king, up to the suffragettes of the 20th century fighting for women's right to vote. It was only a short step to the miniskirt, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and punk.
Rush hour in London: We can no longer convince the British to love the EU. It's too late for that. But perhaps we should use this opportunity to mention how much the rest of Europe admires them. It's unbelievable that they don't seem to see how much they've shaped the continent, how much we value them here, how close we Germans feel to them.
A mural in Bristol of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson: Of course, Brexit won't be followed by an apocalypse or a third world war as David Cameron has insinuated. But Britain will be alone. The country will pivot away from Europe and there will be a process of mutual distancing.
A Remain campaign electronic billboard in London: This referendum is the most momentous decision to be made in decades. Brexit would be a triumph of cynicism over reason. The 20th century showed that everyone benefits when Britain faces up to problems instead of running away.
