UK goes to the polls on EU membership

Voting is underway across Britain in the referendum on EU membership.

Polls opened at 7am and will close at 10pm. In total, 46,499,537 people are registered to vote in the referendum – the biggest electorate in the history of British elections.

Politicians on both sides of the argument spent yesterday making their final pitches to voters. David Cameron and former prime ministers Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Sir John Major issued a joint plea last night for Britons to cast their vote for Remain.

Mr Cameron drilled home his message that there was “no going back” in the case of a Leave vote, and said Remain had the “biggest coalition of support in history - from businesses, to trade unions to expert economists and across political parties - for a vote to remain”.

Mr Brown described it as a “momentous, generation-defining decision about what kind of country we are”, while Mr Blair said Brexit would be a “reckless leap in the dark”.

Leading Brexit campaigner Michael Gove, meanwhile, told the Daily Mail this was “D-Day... democracy day”.

The Justice Secretary compared the UK leaving the EU to the US fighting for independence from the British Empire.

“The decision the American Revolutionaries had to make in the 1770s about whether or not to continue to be ruled by someone who was distant and unaccountable, who imposed taxes without listening to their voices or whether to break free.

“They decided to break free then and America has never looked back and the world had cause to be grateful.”

His fellow pro-Leave Tory Boris Johnson urged Britons to “speak up for democracy”.

Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron has told voters that it will be their children and grandchildren who have to “live with the consequences” of their choice.

In a piece for Holyrood’s sister site PoliticsHome, he said: “Whatever the fears of some, we live in a global world. My sense if that the British are confident enough to meet that modern world head on and embrace it.

“Now is not the time to haul up that drawbridge, leaving us isolated and poorer.  By voting to remain, we can show the world we are an open, outward-facing Britain we can all be proud of.”