Spare a thought for the proud Brits denied tomorrow’s vote

I live in Italy at the heart of the European Union and have witnessed first hand how the euro has destroyed La Dolce Vita and reduced the Italian economy to basket case status. But even though I am a British citizen and probably better equipped than most to see just how awful the EU is, I am not allowed to vote in the referendum tomorrow. Why? Because I have not been registered to vote in the UK within the past 15 years.

I may live abroad but I remain proudly British. I fly a Union Jack – bought in a ship’s chandlers in the port of Ravenna where the exiled poet Dante died in 1321 – from the aerial of my Land Rover Defender. It’s the vehicle I use to ferry my six young Anglo-Italian children around the mosquito-infested Italian countryside on the Adriatic coast where we live and in which every now and again I sing ‘Rule Britannia’.