It’s a big day here in the United Kingdom.

As we’ve driven through the countryside, we’ve seen huge banners draped across hay bales screaming “Vote Leave!” and equally large banners elsewhere reading “Vote Remain!”  Newspaper headlines blare advice to vote one way or the other.

The polls are very close, with a slight lead — 51% to 49% in the most recent survey that I’ve seen — held by the side that wants to remain in the European Union.  But the vote could easily go either way.

Brexit, people are calling it.  “British exit from the EU.”  Those who advocate it sometimes call it Britain’s “Independence Day.”

It’s a momentous occasion.

The United Kingdom, separated from continental Europe by the English Channel and, further north, by the North Sea, has always been different.  They drive on the left hand side of the road here, after all.  And, even while in the EU, they’ve retained the British pound rather than adopting the Euro.  But they’ve been drawn deeper and deeper into the rest of Europe.  Air travel and the Chunnel (the Channel tunnel) and modern communications have lessened the metaphorical distance between the Continent and William Blake’s “green and pleasant land,” with its sense of special destiny:

  And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon England’s mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England’s pleasant pastures seen!

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England’s green & pleasant Land.

Today’s vote is about more than merely withdrawing from the European Union, with its sick and undisciplined socialist economies, its officious and meddling bureaucrats in Brussels, and the possibility of a pan-European military.  It’s about the United Kingdom’s conception of itself.

Posted from Brockwood Hall, Cumbria, England