Sir Winston Churchill once famously remarked that the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. In just 124 days’ time the people of Britain will have the chance to vote on whether or not to stay in the European Union. Trust them or not, the people will decide – and it’s right that they do.

Why are we having a referendum in the first place? Jeremy Corbyn says that Cameron’s entire renegotiation exercise has merely been to “appease opponents in the Conservative Party.” Most MPs in the Labour Party, and some Conservative Europhiles like Ken Clarke, insist that it’s irresponsible to open the question of Britain’s membership of the EU at all, let alone to put it to an unpredictable public vote.

The Conservative Party has been long divided over Europe, but to explain the referendum as a means of internal party management misses something much more fundamental. The reality is that Britain as a whole has been divided over Europe since we entered the then European Economic Community in 1973. When we opened up our membership by holding a referendum just two years later, we voted to remain by a 2:1 margin. Nonetheless, we’ve always been what Stephen George called the “awkward partner” in Europe. We’ve always liked the idea of a common market and economic cooperation, but been pretty suspicious of other forms of integration that might take us towards a ‘United States of Europe’-style superstate.

The Treaty of Maastricht of 1992 laid the foundations of the European Union as it stands today. It took much bolder steps towards European integration than had been seen before. John Major negotiated some ‘opt-outs’ for the UK, but many Tory backbenchers were furious that he signed it at all. They felt that he was surrendering British sovereignty to Brussels. It should be noted, however, that at the time most people in Britain agreed. Just 26% supported further integration. Excluding ‘don’t-knows’, over 60% of the British public opposed the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992 according to official EU polling. The British public, of course, never formally voted on the Treaty, presumably for fear of delivering the ‘wrong’ result.

Ironically, however, a major source of people’s distrust of European integration has been precisely political leaders’ successive lack of trust in them. Maybe a referendum in 1992 would have rejected the Treaty of Maastricht, but we’ll never know. Even though a sizeable majority of people told pollsters that they opposed the Treaty, a staggering 83% said they knew “little or nothing” about it. 83%! You can do the math: the level of people’s opposition couldn’t possibly have been because they knew much about the details of the Treaty of Maastricht. It was at least partly a general expression of their frustration with the overly elitist way in which further integration was taking place.

Fast-forward to 2016 and people still know very little about the European Union, why it exists, what it does, and how it works. Of course, it doesn’t really matter that most people don’t know the name of the European Commissioner for the Digital Single Market (Andrus Ansip, if you’re interested) or the number of MEPs in the European Parliament (751). What does matter is that regardless of the merits and drawbacks of European integration, people in Britain have consistently had little reason to become informed on the European Union. In 2015, two-thirds of Britons reported feeling as if their voice didn’t count in the European Union.

The words ‘ever closer union’ are enshrined in successive EU treaties as a fundamental goal of the organisation. The full aim, more precisely, is an “ever closer union among the peoples of Europe.” The process of integration itself, however, hasn’t involved the people very much. Instead, it’s been very much an elite-driven process. It’s epitomised by the European Council meeting over the last number of days in Brussels: national leaders meeting behind closed doors, spending sleepless hours negotiating, and then emerging with some sort of agreement.

When it comes to this particular agreement of 28 European leaders, however, the leaders themselves don’t matter anymore. Angela Merkel doesn’t matter anymore, Jean-Claude Juncker doesn’t matter anymore, and David Cameron doesn’t matter anymore. The future of Britain’s continued place in Europe is no longer in the hands of political elites. It’s in the hands of the British electorate. For those who sympathise with Churchill’s remarks on the average voter, it is a terrifying prospect.

The result of the referendum on 23 June is genuinely unpredictable. Just as one poll emerges that shows a majority leaning towards Brexit, another one appears to suggest that a majority will choose to stay in the EU. It’s not that one poll is accurate and another inaccurate; it’s that so many people still have to make up their minds. Public opinion is fluctuating. And that’s fine, for now. There are still 124 days for people to weigh up what is best for the future of the country.

Maybe a five-minute conversation with an average voter is enough to make it seem ridiculous to trust them with the future of the country. But Churchill recognised the bigger picture beyond the uninformed voter: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” And ‘other forms’ have indeed been tried from time to time across Europe. Nazi Germany. Fascist Italy. Communist Eastern Europe. If one of the fundamental reasons for the existence of the European Union is to illustrate that democracies can successfully cooperate with each other in a continent marred by conflict and totalitarianism, democracy can hardly be described as a threat to the future of Europe itself.

Democracy isn’t perfect. Holding a referendum is a huge gamble for Cameron. Having been deprived of a meaningful say over European integration for over a generation, however, it’s time that the people of Britain had a say. But first, they’d better be prepared for more than just a five-minute conversation about Europe. The EU’s leaders have wrapped up their hours of agonising deliberation. Now it’s over to the voters.