In Malta, as in my own country – the United Kingdom – our democracies rely most heavily on the principle that elected legislatures reign supreme. The election, where every facet of every policy is tested by the electorate, holds sway.

In Britain, Italy and elsewhere, we have seen the emergence of ‘the referendum’. This device endangers our ability to think clearly. It undermines democracy itself and sets family and communities at war with each other. Brexit is the great model for this most fatal of intrusions into the democratic process.

Clement Atlee, who won the landslide election victory of the Labour Party in 1945, called referenda“the instruments of Nazism and Fascism”. Margaret Thatcher, onthe opposite side of that fence, would call referendums many decades later “a device of dictators and demagogues”.

Both were right.

In the UK, despite the will of the people clearly expressed in our last election, a monstrous tyranny of the disaffected has usurped our parliamentary process. That is why we are where we are. Sadly so.

So I appeal to my friends in Malta: never ever again seek to use the instrument of a referendum to force change on your own society. You will simply undermine democracy itself but much, much worse create hatred and division between yourselves. Between friends and family and colleagues at work.

As time goes by you will see how the Brexit referendum has and will continue to divide and maybe destroy the very fabric of UK society.

It is not worth the candle. The time is here to bury this unconstitutional baggage where it belongs. Far, far underground where no glimmer of sunlight might ever give it the light of day to seek out and destroy the delicate membrane of a caring and loving society.