The EU referendum campaign has begun without the precise terms even being known. Despite being a lifelong Europhile, it fills me with no enthusiasm. The Europe I hoped for and remain convinced is needed has been abrogated, if not abandoned; the social union to counterbalance the economic area forgotten, if not buried. That’s even before the Prime Minister returns proclaiming renegotiations that will diminish rather than enhance the European Union. That’s the conundrum facing David Cameron and pro-Europe campaigners; the more pandering there is to the Eurosceptic right, the fewer reasons supporters of Europe have to vote for it.

All this is happening when Europe is facing an unprecedented refugee crisis, growing financial challenges from new economic areas that threaten standards of living and many other serious trials in a globalised world. It’s not only across the other side of the Mediterranean that there’s instability but also on the borders with Russia and in the Balkans. It’s a time when collective European action is required more than ever; and yet fragmentation and increased isolation seem to beckon. The tinkering to pacify those with a rabid hostility to the EU is undermining the significant actions needed to confront the major economic and social challenges upon us.

My support for Scotland to be an active political participant in Europe is longstanding and predates the cause of Independence in Europe articulated by the SNP. It goes back to when, like many others of my age, I travelled around Europe on Inter Rail and subsequently across the United States on Greyhound buses. Those sojourns helped form my political views. I realised that the UK and US, to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, were two countries separated by a common language. Whilst much of the popular culture was shared, the political culture was not. The scenery and the vitality of their society besotted me. However, the poverty and the absence of a welfare state shocked me. Their literature, music and film continue to beguile me but their social attitudes on gun control, same-sex marriage and race more often appal me.

Notwithstanding the linguistic barriers, I realised I was philosophically north European. The society I sought was a dream shared by Germans, Dutch and Scandinavians amongst many others. It was the great heyday for European social democracy. The politicians I admired were the likes of Willy Brandt in West Germany and Olaf Palme in Sweden; seeking a peaceful resolution to the Cold War and desiring equality in their own country but also campaigning for peace and a fairer world. This was as opposed, as it seemed across the Atlantic, to fighting a third world war on the European continent, waging war in Vietnam or elsewhere and the devil take the hindmost .

It was to be an alternative model to the US, not just a bulwark to it. Europe was my philosophical as much as my physical home. It was common interests as much as a common market that made me support membership of the European Economic Community.

At the minimum, the European Community had brought peace to a continent that had seen my father fight in the Second World War and my grandfather in the First. When the EU was established and the Berlin Wall demolished I saw opportunities for the realisation of a shared hoped; a social union not just an economic one. What appalled the Tory anti-Europeans appealed to me. It was a chance to improve not just standards of living but quality of life for all European citizens. Countries liberated from the Soviet yoke could be levelled up, not used to undermine the rights or wages of workers in the old Europe.

Apocryphal tales of bans on bagpipes or straight bananas were simply that. The devastation caused to Scotland’s steel industry and the sell-out of our fisheries were caused by British actions and the failure of UK representation, not the EU. Other small nations, in particular Ireland, had found the political oxygen not just to breathe but to thrive in that political environment. Scotland could do likewise. Some sovereignty was lost but this was outweighed by necessary collective action.

Of course the EU was far from perfect. There was a democratic deficit. The Commission was aloof, the bureaucracy frightening and progress laboured. Diktats were imposed rather than hearts and minds being won. But there was still the belief that it could be changed and the twin goals of economic prosperity and social justice pursued. Sadly, over recent years those dreams have dimmed as the great social democratic parties of Europe have diminished. The SDP in Germany and many others have suffered in the old Europe; mostly, it has to be said, at their own hands as the values they held were discarded and the vision they possessed was non-existent. When Angela Merkel is the unrivalled star of European leadership it casts a searchlight on the plight of the social democratic movement that once shone the way.

In the new Europe, right-wing governments have arisen that are anathema to conservatives, not just social democrats. Yet, tragically, it is those new right-wing governments that Mr Cameron is consorting with to achieve the changes he desires. The neo-fascist ideology that European unity was meant to counteract has taken root in both the old and new Europe.

It wasn’t just in ideas but in actions that the EU has most recently failed. The deliberate impoverishment of the Greek people is the nadir of the European dream. The birthplace of democracy saw it crushed by an unelected troika. Those who had benefitted most from post-war Marshall aid had short memories of their own former plight and the basis for their modern-day success.

Now is when a coordinated EU is needed: addressing the refugee crisis by acting collectively; dispersing many and returning some; working together to meet the challenges the Chinese and the other Bric economies bring; having a united front on trade negotiations with the US, able to challenge the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations, not enforce them; protecting all in Europe from Russian aggression, without a return to the Cold War; and providing an alternative to US neo-liberalism and Chinese state capitalism.

Sadly, the EU stumbling in its attempts to harmonise economic progress and social justice. Yet this is what the world, and not just the European continent, needs. This is less the start of a new European dawn and more about the demise of past European empires, challenged from without and rotting from within.

I’m being asked to vote against the catastrophe of Brexit; not for the Europe I want and that is badly needed. I’ll do so to avoid handing victory to Little Englanders desirous of some offshore tax-haven trading in an unmitigated capitalist world. I’ll vote yes but with no enthusiasm. This isn’t the dream of those who sought to bring peace to a war-ravaged continent and create a better and fairer world. I’ll vote in the hope that someday the dreams of those great European leaders can be resurrected.