After almost 2.75 years after June 23 2016 and that referendum, I think it is fair to say that Brexit is complicated.

It’s such a shame that so many politicians present it as anything but.

The curse of our age is black and white thinking. It’s probably the curse of all ages, but this need to put things into one simple category or another serves us so badly. I blame the human brain. It’s lazy, it doesn’t want to have to use too much energy. It’s still functioning as if we were roaming the swamps in animal skins.

And so we get the likes of Farage or Rees-Mogg or Johnson telling us they know the precise nature of “the Brexit people voted for”. Surprisingly it is remarkably similar to the one they voted for. It’s a shame the idea is such nonsense.

The very notion that 17,410,742 people were all voting for exactly the same thing is so ridiculous that it beggars belief that the elite public schools that educated Rees-Mogg, Farage or Johnson can have produced such moronic thinking.

The other day I heard similar over-simplification from Ian Paisley junior. It was the first time I had heard him speak (it was on a podcast). He told a debate that the Brexit vote was like him saying he was going to leave a room. He wouldn’t then hang around a while and not properly leave. He said he would leave, so he would leave.

I wish someone had said, well what if there were multiple exits to the room. Perhaps a window in one corner, with a forty foot drop. Perhaps an incredibly heavy door in another corner that needed twenty people to get it open. Perhaps a secret invisible door somewhere else that nobody knew existed. What does his statement of  ‘I’m going to leave’ actually mean in those circumstances.

And what about if once you opened a door you discovered that it was pouring with rain, and the streets were crawling with starved lions. Would you still leave just because you said you were going to leave? Or would you say, well I have some new facts now and I may need to re-evaluate what I said?

It’s true that 17,410,742 voted to leave the EU. But some of them will have voted that way because they ticked the wrong box. And some who voted remain will have done exactly the same. Some of them, like my dad (and probably most dads of people my age) will have voted that way because they have well thought-through concerns about what the EU has turned into since it was first presented to the nation as a trading block (and a trading block only) back in the 1970s. Some will have voted that way because they were lied to (again, ditto remain voters voting remain).

Basically it’s complicated and I wish more of our politicians could do us the favour of making that clear.

This will win me few friends in many quarters, but Tony Blair has explained it the best so far. We have an exit choice between pointless and painful. We could opt for a deal which is frankly worse than what we have now – pointless. Or we can exit with the pain of a clean break. We have a forty year entanglement with the EU and breaking away from it is going to hurt and cost us quite a lot of money in the short to medium term. This does not mean we shouldn’t do it. But our politicians should do us the favour of at least being honest.

What I have found interesting in the whole process is that as some people have learnt more about the EU they have shifted their position.

I know I have. From listening to the various debates I am now more Eurosceptic than I was.

Here’s why.

I think that a lot of left of centre liberals are pro EU because the EU has been a left of centre outfit in the main. It has pushed more for worker rights, tighter environmental standards and so on. We tend to take that as a given and therefore the sovereignty issue does not bother us that much. It bothers the right of centre people because those issues are ones they may have different views on.

But, the fact is, it is not a given. Let’s imagine that right wing populism sweeps Europe and the majority of European leaders are from the right.

What if EU policy then begins to drift to the right? What if EU laws and directives start coming our way which hurt workers, or immigrants or have a relaxed approach to animal welfare and pollution?

Might we then find that the left of centre folk want their power back? Might we then find that they don’t see the EU as such a positive force for good after all?

We can never take good democracy and the status quo for granted. Things can change.

It’s back to black and white thinking. Those on the remain side (being human) are as guilty of it as those on the leave side. If we romanticise the EU we are fooling ourselves. And if we demonise it we are doing the same.

Like life, politics is messy. Can we at least all be grown up enough to admit that and do what we can to reach an adult compromise?