Dear Editor,

The UK has split down the middle. We have become two tribes; those who voted to leave the EU and those who voted to remain. The result of Thursday’s referendum has led to a huge outpouring of grief and frustration from the Remain camp that mostly brands all Leave campaigners senile, xenophobic, kitten-killing traitors (OK...I invented the kitten-killing bit) while in turn Leave accuses Remain of being undemocratic, sore losers blind to the faults of the EU. I open my Facebook newsfeed with trepidation; every other post is either a petition for some kind of second referendum or a cartoon of Boris et al walking off a cliff somewhere near Dover. Occasionally it provides a little light relief when Winnie the Pooh pops up threatening to send Piglet to David Cameron...

A week on in our post referendum United (?) Kingdom and the first thing everybody wants to know is how you voted. Are you ’one of us’ or ’one of them’? How should I relate to you? I possibly suffer more from this than others as I made it clear I was well and truly on the fence before the referendum and happily admit I struggled with the issue. I genuinely felt the weight of the question and determined to ensure that when I cast my vote I had some understanding of exactly what it was I was voting for. To this end I attended local debates with my MP and MEPS’s and tried to read around the subject from a number of different viewpoints. With hindsight I could possibly have done more but I know I genuinely tried to get my head around the Brexit debate. I guess the problem for me was that the more I tried to understand the issue the more complicated and confusing it became.

On the day itself I actually delayed going to vote hoping for some damascene intervention but this was not to be and as I passed through the doors of my local polling station I pulled a coin from my pocket and thought ’OK...heads leave, tails remain’. I tossed the coin and walked into a booth where I put a cross in one of the two boxes before depositing it in the ballot box. I was undecided when I walked in and to be honest I was undecided when I walked out. I’m not going to tell you how I voted, and I’m not even going to tell you whether the coin influenced my decision because, to put it bluntly, it’s nobody else’s business but mine. That clever little polling booth is designed to provide us all with a neutral space where we can cast our votes without pressure and oversight from external forces. Voting should always be a wholly private affair.

To be honest I’m very happy to remain in a state of quantum flux...the referendum’s equivalent of Schrodinger’s cat; neither one thing or the other and possibly both at once. Is it wrong to take this position? I have friends on both sides of the divide. Is it wrong to not wish to be categorised as belonging to one tribe or another because of a decision made in a split second? Will you treat me differently if you know how I voted? Will you treat me differently if you don’t know how I voted? Is it really fair to define a person around this one decision? We’re all a damn sight more than a cross in a box. Surely what we need to do now is come together as a nation and attempt to find a way forward for the UK and Europe? We need to begin the healing process rather than further aggravating the wound...

So, when I’m asked, as I will be, ’how did you vote?’ I will say ’with a pencil and paper’ or ’at the polling station like everybody else’. If I’m pressed further I will say I’m sorry but it’s just none of your business. I voted as I felt at that time and that is that.

Now for the painful bit. Having explained my position I need to apologise to my MP Jesse Norman. Over the course of the referendum campaign I publicly criticised him on numerous occasions for not declaring which way he intended to vote. I felt he had a democratic duty to his constituents to share what he believed would be the best result for the Country and the County. I believe my desire to force his hand actually came from my own inner turmoil and, for the record; while I know we disagree on a range of other issues I respect you for maintaining your neutral position throughout the campaign.

Ed O’Driscoll, Ross