THERE was a sad but peaceful lull in the hurly-burly of the referendum campaign over the weekend as we paused to remember, and to mourn, the brutal death of my much loved colleague Jo Cox.

It is a desperate loss not only for her young family, but for Parliament and democracy as a whole. So we paused to grieve for her.

Unless you have bought your Gazette & Herald very early on the morning of June 23 and read it straightaway, you will very probably be reading this after the EU Referendum is over, and after the result is known. So I will not reiterate my passionately held reasons for wanting to leave the EU, which I hope I have laid out clearly elsewhere.

I very much hope that June 23, 2016 will be known for all time as ‘Independence Day’, the day on which the people of Britain once again took control of our own fortunes, through our elected representatives in Westminster, rather than relying on a remote governing elite in the corridors of power in Brussels. If so I pledge to do what I can to help smooth our departure from the EU, and begin to plan our relationship with the rest of the world for the benefit of our children and grandchildren.

If on the other hand the people have voted for us to remain in the EU, and always assuming that that is by a reasonable majority (60/40, for example), then I will of course accept the democratic will of the people. If it is ‘Remain’ by a narrow majority, then I will be arguing that the people of Britain have made their deep disquiet over the EU known loud and clear. Project Fear, and our innate dislike of the unknown, may have led to a narrow win for the Remain side, but that should not obscure our distrust of the institutions of the EU, and I will continue to demand fundamental reform of them.

Either way round there may well be turbulent times to come in the Conservative Party and Government, especially after the very regrettable way in which the Remain campaign (and to a lesser degree the Vote Leave campaign) have been conducted over the last few months. That must be dealt with quickly and decisively; it must be swift and surgical; and it must not be allowed further to detract from the business of governing the country.

It is just over a year since we Conservatives were given a mandate by the people to carry out our manifesto commitments, and to run the country as well as we possibly can in every way. It is vital that after the turbulence of the referendum campaign we should now return to doing so, and I promise to do my bit in trying to ensure that we do.

So I hope against hope that the result will be that we Beleave in Britain and have voted for independence from the interfering and bossy bureaucrats in Brussels. If we have not, that will not blunt my determination to curb their excesses in the future.

But more than anything else, and whatever the result, we must now get on with the good government of the United Kingdom.