THOSE of us lucky enough to live in Sussex are closer to the European continent than most others.

For me it’s a daily reminder that whether we like it or not, we are part of Europe. It’s not just a fact of our geography but also of our history, which has been bound up with our neighbours ever since Julius Caesar crossed the Channel almost 2,000 years ago.

Sometimes our ties have been as much about war as peace but today we have been privileged to live in a Europe that has been at peace for longer than at any time in living memory.

Yet that is not the impression one gets from most of the press, particularly yesterday’s. For there stands the Mayor of London in all his glory defying the European hoards and, Churchill-style, rallying “his” people. In an article in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph he invokes the great man, suggesting that Churchill would have favoured withdrawal.

Unlikely, for Churchill, more than most, would have been intensely aware that the beginnings of what is now the European Union came when, with the Second World War, still a very recent and raw memory, visionary European politicians got together to plan how to stop the continent from ever plunging into war again.

Johnson, and his supporters in the press, argue that the European project should have stopped at simply creating a “common market” – but it was always about more than just creating a trading block, important as that is, it was about creating a wider community that meant that Europeans became partners not enemies, and in that it’s been stunningly successful.

Much of the press argue that we should be like Norway or Switzerland, which are outside the EU and doing well. But that’s no solution for us for, while it’s true that they do get access to EU markets they do so only by obeying all the EU’s rules – rules that they have had no say in formulating. That is not a model for the UK.

But back to Boris. On a very basic level his article contains many of the sorts of myths about Europe that the right-wing press have been carrying for years and no doubt will be repeated often between now and Referendum Day.

For example, he writes that under European law “… you can’t recycle a teabag, or that children under eight cannot blow up balloons” – great lines, neither true.

But his most important error is when he says, first of all rightly “...there is a risk that a vote to leave the EU, as it currently stands, will cause fresh tensions in the union between England and Scotland”, but he is very wrong when he goes on to assert that “On the other hand, most of the evidence I have seen suggests that the Scots will vote on roughly the same lines as the English”.

The most recent polling shows the Scots favour staying in the EU by almost two to one. And this isn’t a simple debating point. Last year the Scots voted by 55 per cent to 45 per cent to remain part of the United Kingdom. If the UK votes to leave, how long would it take the Scots to hold a referendum and vote to leave a UK that is no longer part of the European Union? Not long, I am sure.

So leaving the EU would mean, almost certainly, Scotland leaving the UK – among all the others, is that a risk worth taking?