The high inflation that has followed the pirate Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will have wicked economic consequences for all of us. To navigate the coming decades states will need political and economic resilience: the ability to create wealth and keep the lights on, maintain social cohesion and protect core values through one storm after another. 

The years from 2020 to 2022 created moments of advantage for a UK now free (and obliged) to move with greater agility, and in some cases we have grabbed the opportunity in a way that demonstrates capability and intent as we saw with COP26, vaccines, Aukus, Ukraine and the Global Combat Air Programme. 

Yet a divided island has so far been unable to construct a convincing strategy for the new world order. 

This shouldn’t come as a surprise – despite the jeopardy of leaving the EU, an unexpected act of deviance from global orthodoxy, our political attention span is currently shorter than any other G7 countries, and three Prime Ministers have so far proved unable to do very much with Brexit. 

Thus we enter 2023 in a bad way: our government sclerotic, our under-invested infrastructure creaking, our public services striking and a stalled economy.

So far, so New York Times. And the Gray Lady’s commentators have a point: the UK has lost its mojo. Our political class can behave as if government is an amusing game, officials process urgent requests at glacial speed and the business mood has turned sour and risk averse. 

The Treasury’s suppression of industrial strategy since the 1990s now looks complacent and has left our economy un-anchored. British boardrooms are more reluctant to adopt new technologies than their G7 peers, while only a small fraction of our pension capital (at nearly £3 trillion in 2020, the second largest in the world) is invested in UK equities and scale-ups. 

The sense that Britain needed a cold shower was why many voted to leave the EU back in 2016, but so far Brexit hasn’t provided many useful answers, and its chilling effect on our EU trade and Foreign Direct Investment has ratcheted up the anxiety levels. Low morale matters because it saps confidence and changes expectations and behaviour – what the Prime Minister recently called the “creeping acceptance of a narrative of decline”.

But there is a counter narrative: that the New York Times’s anglo-scepticism blinds it to the fact that the UK’s underlying condition is not nostalgia but nonconformity, and a healthy obsession with holding power to account. You might call it “Democracy First”. 

Leaving the EU restored the direct link between British voters and their government. The implementation of a controversial and deeply problematic referendum result made plain that when forced to choose between the rights of citizens and the interests of capital, the British state is on the side of the people. This matters. 

British society is as open, diverse and tolerant as any in the world, and unlike the US is free of religious fervour and deep-rooted racial tension. An already robust system of constitutional monarchy – Brexit’s agonies would have blown the roof off most other parliaments – will become fairer and more resilient as Brexit drives further devolution and political reform. 

“Democracy First” should also build our economic resilience because liberal democracies tend to create attractive operating platforms for wealth creators and investors. From the Industrial Revolution to the emergence of London as a global financial centre, the UK has been an exemplar of this connection. Our economy has underperformed since the 2008 Financial Crisis but it possesses fundamental strengths: we have the best network of research universities in Europe and are strong in growth industries like science, innovation (only the US and China have more unicorns), finance and services. We are the world’s ninth largest manufacturer. And we control our (albeit dented) currency.

 Over time our businesses will learn to work around the frictions of being outside the Single Market, and because of Brexit we should remain open rather than raising barriers as the EU is doing, and ensure that our regulatory regime, already one of the most admired in the world, continues to deliver the best possible outcomes for businesses and consumers. 

But democratic rigour, and jam tomorrow, don’t provide solutions to today’s problems. We have a choice: use Brexit as a starting point for national renewal, or remain divided and start teaching our children the decline narrative. 

First, we need to heal the divisions of 2016. Those of us who backed Leave must acknowledge that Brexit isn’t working, has hampered the lived experience of many, particularly young people, and has done damage to our trade with the EU that has not yet been balanced by better trade with the rest of the world. It is not clear to most people what Brexit is actually for. And pragmatic Remain supporters need to accept that our relationship with the EU has been irreversibly altered, that Leave voters weren’t “stupid” but made a decision to reject an EU-UK status quo that they neither understood nor regarded as in their interests, and that Brexit doesn’t represent a lurch towards extremism – you’ll find representatives of the hard right and left in the Assemblée Nationale, Bundestag and European Parliament but not in the House of Commons. The UK can be a good European without being in the EU. The concept of Global Britain should be welcomed by internationalists.

It might help if we learnt to regard the Brexit years as a shared trauma, one that we all survived. The referendum result was, in political terms, the most difficult imaginable because it was decisive but close and provided no instruction as to what leaving the EU actually meant. The closeness and ambiguity of the result emboldened some on the Remain side to demand another referendum: re-runs worked for the European Commission when Ireland, France and the Netherlands voted against the flow of European integration in the noughties. 

Months then years of recrimination followed between individuals and interest groups each convinced that only they were truly acting in the national interest (though only one side had won the referendum), producing a furious stasis and then – suddenly – an act of constitutional violence by Boris Johnson that wrenched the UK free in a clean break. This was a hard Brexit in every sense of the word and though it provided a blooded kind of justice for the 52%, it landed the UK further from the EU than many Leave voters had intended. 

This year, Rishi Sunak will attempt to narrow the gap. His first objective is to unlock the Northern Ireland Protocol. Sunak hopes that removing the stone in the shoe of the UK/EU relationship will enable mutually rewarding collaborations in areas like scientific research, energy strategy and mobility. The European Commission would also like better relations with Europe’s leading defence and security power, and the EU’s biggest trading partner, although Brussels regards our messy democracy with Olympian hauteur and is in no mood to hand us any freebies. 

If a thaw does set in, the European Political Community (EPC) championed by Emmanuel Macron could emerge as a new structure to contain Britain in Europe. The EPC is a possible solution to other unresolved EU relationships including the challenge of where to accommodate post-war Ukraine; the UK’s endorsement would be a big plus. 

Meanwhile, the man who looks likely to be the next Prime Minister has established himself as the most pragmatic of Remainers, pledging to keep the UK out of the Single Market and deliver on Vote Leave’s promise to take back control. Rishi Sunak would be smart to involve Sir Kier Starmer in his discussions with Brussels, signalling that the UK’s Brexit divisions really are coming to an end. 

Even better if Sunak can persuade Starmer to participate in a public dialogue about the contours of a new British consensus. What sort of country do we want to be, at home and abroad? This might seem a strange question to ask one of the most successful countries in the world, but you try and answer it. Or point to where a British plan is written down in language that is easily understood? 

Although a post-Brexit consensus must be pitched high enough to allow enough democratic space for the political parties to compete for primacy, the (unspeakable) truth is that Labour and the Conservatives are currently in broad agreement on the UK’s economic and political priorities – Labour’s recent review into how to make the UK the best place in the world to start and scale a business could have been written by CCHQ. Post Corbyn, Brexit and Truss the competition isn’t about “what”, but “how”. 

A new British consensus must be built on a long term plan. Since 1945 Whitehall strategy has been light on detail, laissez faire in spirit, and held tight by the centre. Westminster’s adversarial system created a fig leaf for the absence of grand strategy – there was something un-British about the idea of consensus, and what was the point of making one plan when the next Government was sure to rip it up in favour of another? The elite’s failure to construct and communicate a convincing strategy helps explain why we left the EU. It also explains why our infrastructure is creaking, why the NHS is failing and why the City of London is not better integrated with, or more deeply invested in, the rest of the country. We need uncontested, widely understood long-term targets on industrial strategy, skills creation, healthcare, the transition to renewable energy and foreign policy.

If our politicians can’t agree upon what these strategic objectives are then maybe we need a Royal Commission – on British Resilience – to decide for them.  

Sustaining a British consensus will require greater professionalism in SW1. Westminster must learn to temper its tribalism, celebrate what is held in common, and steer debates and enquiries towards producing solutions and efficiencies, rather than rows. And we need to transform a Civil Service culture that often appears to prefer consulting to decision-making, and makes it very difficult to remove poorly performing officials.

After resigning from No 10, Munira Mirza, Boris Johnson’s respected former Policy Director, set up Civic Future, a foundation to prepare the next generation of leaders for public life. We need more initiatives like this if we are to change the behaviour of Ministers, Civil Servants, MPs and – hardest of all – the media: can the lobby learn to build as well as destroy ?

Finally, a new consensus needs to draw on science and technology as the driver of British prosperity and influence. We have an unrivalled history of invention, and a rich innovation ecosystem UK-wide. London is the tech capital of Europe, and the continent’s VC HQ. We are leaders in AI, biotech, cybersecurity, gaming, fintech, quantum computing and nuclear fusion. British science supports the defence and security capability that underwrites our global role. 

It is not crazy to aspire to become a science and tech superpower, but it will require constant policy and investment focus from a succession of Governments, a generous visa programme and a transformation in the quality of our scale-up ecosystem so that more founders choose to “go global” from the UK.

A new British consensus is what a majority of voters wish for. But that doesn’t mean that they will get it. The UK possesses the tools of good statecraft: liberal democracy, an advanced economy, soft and hard power. But these capabilities mean little while so many are divided. If our elected representatives can find a way of coalescing around an ambitious, long-term plan, the UK could turn out to be the most successful democracy of the 21st century.

The author is a Senior Managing Director at Teneo, the global CEO advisory firm. He worked as Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Chief Business Adviser 2020-2022. 

Nigel spent his twenties and early thirties in England, working in a series of management roles in the construction and manufacturing industries. Living in London in the late sixties and early seventies he campaigned against apartheid, serving on the Camden race relations committee. He returned to Scotland in 1976 to buy David Auld Valves, a Glasgow-based manufacturing business. Turning it around and raising a family of four children with his wife Jodie kept him out of politics for the next decade but in 1986 he was invited onto the board of the BBC’s National Broadcasting Council for Scotland.

Officially, his role was to represent the views of Scottish business, but Nigel chose to take a broader view, concerned that the national broadcaster was too London-centric, and arguing for more of its budget and operation to be devolved across the UK. That British power was too centralised and, if Westminster and Whitehall could be only persuaded to trust people everywhere with more responsibility, then the UK should be a fairer, happier and more productive country, was a cherished Nigel truth which he never let go.

The BBC’s internal politics and its complicated relationship with government helped Nigel understand how the British establishment operated and reached decisions – and, crucially, how it might be persuaded. A Scottish voice for reform that was unwelcome and easily ignored, Nigel learned to gather the evidence he needed to build a compelling case, and then to make it with tenacious persistence.

Nigel was always able to see the wood from the trees because his perspective was uncluttered by the sorts of calculations (ego, fear, uncertainty) that often befuddle the rest of us. There was never anything in it for him; he simply did what he thought was best. He was unable to disguise his affection for people and had a gift for recruiting others to his cause, one-at-a-time over a glass of wine or a walk in his beloved Campsie hills.

Nigel was not clubbable in a St James’s sense, but he was brilliant at building solidarity. A twinkle in Nigel’s eyes would communicate absolute confidence that his interlocutor was much too intelligent and generous spirited not to come around to his point of view. “Do you not see?” he’d ask, genuinely perplexed. And when at last they did they would earn a clap on the shoulder, a firm handshake and then Nigel was away into the night; he had a business to run, a family at home, a boat to ready for the spring tide.

Nigel was never a member of a political party. It wasn’t tribalism or ideology that drew him to politics but a determination to make the two countries he loved – Scotland and the United Kingdom – fairer, more settled societies which dealt a better hand to those on the margins of society.

By the early 1990s Nigel was a “British decentralist and a Scottish devolutionist unionist”, and his cause was a Scottish Parliament. Labour’s return to power under Tony Blair made a devolution referendum in inevitable. But Nigel feared disunity among the pro-referendum parties (Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP) might once again fracture the Yes campaign.

So, he used his own money to commission polling that demonstrated that if Yes was united it would beat the Tories comfortably, and in 1996 took the results to the three-party leaders in turn: Donald Dewar, Ming Campbell and Alex Salmond. These men were old rivals, but Nigel persuaded them to bury their differences and form a three-way coalition, which they asked Nigel to chair. In September 1997 Yes won the referendum with 74% of the vote.

In the spring of 1998, Nigel showed the same polling to me. I had travelled up his office in Glasgow to discuss Prime Minister Blair’s plans to hold and win a referendum on the Euro. I was building a UK-wide network for Business for Sterling, a non-party campaign set up to oppose Blair. We wanted to mobilise businessmen and women to make the case for keeping the pound in their hometowns and cities.

But Nigel, who believed that joining the euro would lock the UK economy into the wrong exchange rate with damaging long term consequences for firms and jobs, argued that to win we must also broaden our coalition. I listened very carefully; Nigel spoke like an expert doctor diagnosing a complex condition – connecting the polling numbers with the political cycle, the personality of Blair, the priorities of Labour, the nature of referendums. He talked about politics with a suppleness and affinity that I had not come across before. “Do you not see?” he asked me as he dropped me at Glasgow’s Central Station. I climbed onto the train home crystal clear about one thing: that I had to persuade Rodney Leach, the banker who chaired Business for Sterling, that we needed Nigel on our board.

By the time we launched the cross-party ‘Europe Yes, Euro No’ campaign in September 2000, Nigel (to Rodney’s enormous credit) was Chairman, Dom Cummings was Campaign Director and our brilliant team included Janet Bush, George Eustice, James Frayne, Matthew McGregor, Neil O’Brien and Paul Stephenson. Nigel insisted that all of the coalition, including Caroline Lucas of the Green Party and Ian Davidson’s Labour Against the Euro, had a seat around the table. Conservative supporting business leaders might be paying the bills but that didn’t make it their campaign. The sceptics respected Nigel too much to disobey him and we quickly started earning dividends from a broad-based coalition that the media reckoned Blair would struggle to beat in a referendum. Job done. Another Nigel win.

During the noughties, making the case for a more decentralised EU became an increasingly important issue for Nigel. Gisela Stuart’s experiences as the UK Parliament’s representative on Giscard d’Estaing’s European Constitution Praesidium, a classic exercise in grand fromage subterfuge, deeply disturbed him.

Nigel supported calls for Tony Blair to hold a referendum before ratifying the Constitution. The European Commission’s conveyor belt appetite for greater power offended the devolutionist in Nigel, and the willingness of the UK’s elite to swallow the argument that there could only be one way of “doing” European union irked his reforming instincts. He joined the board of Open Europe, a pro-reform think tank that Rodney, Neil and I founded in 2005.

And he began a correspondence with David Cameron and George Osborne, whom he had first met while chairing the No campaign and whose quality and ambition he had immediately recognised; his main concern was that they should understand Scotland. By 2014 he had become a trusted adviser to Prime Minister Cameron, and his Downing Street policy lead Andrew Dunlop. He was frustrated with how London played the Independence referendum (too remote, too “us and them”, no British vision), but nonetheless called the result precisely. The next day I had lunch with Nigel at his home outside Glasgow and he was cock-a-hoop.

By now Nigel had sold David Auld Valves in a management buy-out, leaving the business in a far better state than when he bought it. Officially he was retired and spending more time on Quartermaster, the 40ft yacht he kept moored on the Clyde estuary and sailed around the western isles in the summer months. He travelled to Africa, Asia and around Britain to see his children and grandchildren.

But politics wasn’t done with him yet, nor was he with politics. After Cameron’s 2013 promise to hold a referendum on EU membership, if he won the 2015 election, Open Europe board meetings became pre-occupied by the prospect of a showdown with the EU, and how it might be used to trigger a Europe-wide debate about reform. A pro-European, Nigel hoped that the EU28 could be persuaded to consider a more flexible structure and return more powers to member state parliaments, something he believed was necessary to safeguard Europe’s liberal democracy, and the long-term future of the EU. If he was here today Nigel would gently remind those bemoaning the UK’s imminent exit that the Westminster parliament is the most moderate in Europe, and UK has the highest levels of support for immigration.

Soon after the 2015 General Election, with the EU referendum now a certainty, Number 10 poached Mats Persson, Open Europe’s Director, to join its negotiating team. Rodney Leach was drawn into the role of consigliere to the Prime Minister. Nigel and the rest of Open Europe’s board members, including Simon Wolfson, David Frost and George Trefgarne looked on, hoping that the EU would accept the case for reform.

When the negotiations ended in February 2016 after an all-night summit in Brussels, Cameron emerged looking harried, resigned to a scrappy referendum which he had promised Donald Tusk he knew how to win. Open Europe’s board members began to split between Leave and Remain. Only Rodney stayed on the fence, out of a sense of loyalty to the Prime Minister. Deeply troubled by the choice that now confronted him, Nigel went quiet.

Then, one morning I received an email from him: “I’m for Leave”. Having reached the same conclusion, I had taken a sabbatical from my business to work for Vote Leave. Nigel’s endorsement was a big boost. During the campaign he made several visits to our Westminster HQ, poring over our polling and giving advice to Gisela and Dom. Once again, he called the result. One more Nigel win.

Political careers are supposed to end in failure, but Nigel’s didn’t. Courageous and independent-minded to the end, he continued to gather his evidence and argue his corner. He thought constantly about how to improve the processes and institutions of British democratic politics; he relished argument and always respected those who disagreed with him, if they too had formed a decent argument.

By the time of the 2019 General Election, he had spent over three years trying to bring Leavers and Remainers together; he was delighted by the result, which he felt restored stability to Westminster politics and at last made reconciliation possible. He was also pleased that the result placed those who had gone back on their 2016 promise to respect the referendum result on the wrong side of history. When I called him on election night, he pointed out that this was the third time the British people had voted for Brexit; “do you think they’ll listen this time?”

His attention returned to the future of the United Kingdom, and the prospect of a new constitutional settlement. Despite the SNP’s gains in Westminster, his instinct was that they were running out of steam. On its twentieth anniversary, he marked the Scottish Parliament 6 out of 10, publicly expressing disappointment that the Scottish parties hadn’t used devolution as an opportunity to trial a more collaborative form of politics.

But he was sure that Scotland and the UK were better off for having Holyrood, and didn’t I see that further reform was always possible? Already he was engaged in a debate about constitutional reform, arguing against the idea of a British federation as too clumsy and bound to create English dominance (you can’t have a federation when the constituent parts are so uneven).

Instead, he believed the government should be encouraging a panoply of institutions and places to practice Britishness in ways that were meaningful and beneficial to voters. Cities like Manchester and Glasgow shared problems and opportunities – the government should be fostering collaborations between them. Why not create a north British caucus bringing together Scotland and northern England? If post-Brexit Britain is to have a new UK Fisheries Board, set it up in Aberdeen but make it answerable to London not Edinburgh. For Nigel, the Union was best expressed by show, not tell.

When in spring 2017 Andrew Hood and I created the Commission for National Renewal, an unofficial and premature initiative to develop a cross-party and Leave-Remain consensus on post-Brexit opportunities, Nigel was one of the first people we invited to join. Almost three years later, Dominic Cummings was planning to offer Nigel a formal advisory role in Boris Johnson’s Government. Had he lived, Nigel would have been one of the architects of post-Brexit Britain.

That his influence won’t be felt by the Government is a great tragedy. Those of us who shared Nigel’s view that a Leave vote was necessary to protect our parliamentary democracy, and to make possible a fairer, less divided society must now work towards this outcome without him. Nigel stood taller than the rest of us and we will need to stand on one another’s shoulders to see as far and as well as he did. Nigel would like that.

Alex Hickman was Chief Executive of Business for Sterling, the No Campaign and Open Europe, and Outreach Director at Vote Leave. He worked with Nigel, on-and-off, from 1998 to 2020.

This demand for more trees gives our generation a chance to restore Britain’s depleted rural and urban landscapes; it also creates precious opportunities for communities across our divided, grumbling but wonderful country to come together.

I have been planting trees and hedgerows for five years now, and it gives me so much pleasure that by mid-summer I find myself beginning to look forward to cold winter days spent outside armed with a spade, a sack of tree whips and the company of friends and neighbours.

I started out in 2014 as a guerrilla planter, stealing out with my neighbour on bleak afternoons to plant oak and field maple whips on spare, unproductive ground around our windswept village in Wiltshire’s Vale of Pewsey. Next, we eyed up two approach roads into the village; these ran in parallel, about half a mile apart and lamentably bare, between open fields. Scraps of hawthorn showed where hedges had once run either side of both roads, but these had been grubbed up when the elms died in the 1970s and 80s. This emptied landscape will be familiar to millions living across the British countryside. My neighbour and I gazed out at these two roads and we imagined restoring the hedges and planting some trees, and thus in a few years bringing colour, depth and new obstruction to our view, laying-down a wildlife corridor and over the years sequestering hundreds, maybe thousands of tonnes of carbon.

So, in the summer of 2015 we contacted the Woodland Trust, and asked for help. The Trust agreed to supply us with trees and hedging plants at cost price if we could get the landowner’s approval. The landowner agreed to buy them if we could find volunteers willing to plant them to a good standard. We recruited over 25 villagers and between December 2015 and March 2016 together planted over 2km (1.2 miles) of hedging.

We had stumbled upon the magic formula for community planting: a willing landowner (free land) plus willing planters (free labour) plus a sponsor (free trees, guards and stakes) creates a win-win situation and enables a community to get large numbers of trees and hedges into the ground quickly, and have a lot of fun together in the process. Those who planted in 2015/16 still smile at the memory of working together through the wind, rain, snow and sunshine. They remember the gossip and banter, and the gratitude they felt to others who turned up with hot sausages and flasks of coffee and tea. At the end of our first day’s planting the community gathered in our village hall for a party. Feasting, toasts and old stories followed. And the next morning we brought our hangovers to the roadside, picked up our spades and resumed planting. Four years later our community takes daily pleasure from seeing these hedges and trees thrive, as do those who drive, ride or cycle past them. The same men and women who planted them now help maintain them. And where there was once only wind-blown ditches and grass verge, the landowner now has five-foot-tall hedges.

The extraordinary political events we have experienced since 2016 has left this country feeling polarised and fractious, but it is an uncomplicated truth that leavers and remainers, conservatives and corbynistas share a love of the places they have chosen to call home. By planting in a landscape that we don’t own but which we inhabit, a community demonstrates its affection for a place and makes an investment in its future. By allowing community planting to take place, a landowner doesn’t just benefit from the shade and windbreaks and biodiversity which trees and hedges provide; by giving a community an opportunity to improve their environment a landowner allows his or her neighbours to express their sense of belonging. Flourishing environments and stronger communities are unquestionably “public goods”, which is why in June this year Michael Gove, then DEFRA’s Secretary of State, asked civil servants to study our community-landowner model as they develop plans for a new subsidy regime for UK landowners.

Since 2016 our community has planted another 2.5 km of hedging in and around our village, and hundreds more standard trees (oaks, hornbeams and maples that will one day grow to define our landscape). This year we have given the project a name, Plant for our Lives, and will plant another 5km of hedgerow (that’s 25,000 hedging plants, mainly hawthorn, hazel, crab apple and dog rose) and 500 standard trees in and around 8 villages. In each village one or two residents have volunteered to recruit local planters and work with local landowners to identify suitable places to plant. And the Woodland Trust is completing this virtuous circle by providing each group with trees, stakes and protection free of charge. We are targeting footpaths and bridleways – cherished connections between communities, between a village and a favourite pub, or routes popular with dog walkers. By restoring trees and hedges to these paths the community will enhance their experience of using them, and the landowner knows that users are more likely to stick to them. And once again, those who planted them will help maintain them. Another win-win-win.

Next year we hope to launch an online platform which will provide anyone who wants to plant trees and hedges in their community with a step-by-step guide to setting up a local group, partnering with a landowner and applying for free trees, stakes and guards. We believe the Plant for our Lives model could be used by every community in the UK, whether it’s in the middle of a city or on the edge of a town. All you need is a willing landowner, willing planters and a free source of trees.

In the meantime, there’s still time to get busy this coming planting season. It runs from early December until the beginning March, when the short winter days are cold and wet, and the bare-root whips are dormant. Don’t waste these dark months – get your hands on some whips from a local nursery and use the time to plant trees in the ground; they are like ticking bombs and come springtime they will explode into green growth and good things will follow.

Alex Hickman tweets at @ajehickman

Presuming the UK leaves the EU with some sort of deal next spring (still the most likely outcome despite Theresa May’s current difficulties), the majority of voters will immediately begin to ask the question: what sort of country do we now want to be? This switch of focus has the potential to unlock valuable reserves of political energy, and bring people back together. After March 2019 most of us will cease to be leavers and remainers, instead we will be fellow citizens of a country whose direction of travel is now settled, and whose future is now in our hands.

I know many people who voted remain at the referendum and would still prefer to stay in the EU but who also recognise the potential opportunity for Britain in ‘taking back control’. Once the UK is out of the EU, they too will want to contribute to a debate about how we govern ourselves, how wealth is created and shared in the future, and how we project our values and influence around the world.

Purists on both sides of the argument risk being left behind. Hardcore opponents of Brexit mock ‘take back control’ as crude populism, meaningless in an age of global supply chains and overlapping, multilateral engagements; these people will continue to try and reverse the referendum result. And there will be those on the leave side who see a deal with Brussels as an unacceptable fudge that neither delivers the mandate of the referendum nor returns enough control; the force of these arguments will prevent some leavers from moving on too.

But imagine there is a deal, and at the end of March a sense of departure, and separation. Negotiations between London and Brussels will grind on into the detail of the future UK-EU relationship and a transition period that will pre-occupy Westminster and Whitehall hour-by-hour, day-by-day for months. Slowly, our politicians and civil servants will adapt to what it means to be a wholly self-governing nation in the uncertain context of the world in 2019. Business, farmers and university vice-chancellors will wait impatiently for clarity and fresh instructions. And tens of millions of voters will expect politicians to start talking about what happens next.

This restlessness creates enormous opportunity, and threat, for the main political parties. For the Conservatives, Brexit is a poisoned chalice. Delivering it in the face of so much difficulty is a true expression of Theresa May’s sense of duty, but the process could still shatter her leadership, and it has already divided her MPs, splintered the coalition that gave David Cameron a majority in 2015 and associated the Conservative brand with incompetence and indifference towards most people’s priorities. A ‘successful Brexit’ for the Prime Minister will almost certainly prompt her colleagues to try and push her out of Downing Street, triggering an ill-timed Tory leadership election. If Theresa May does go, a new leader may not be in post until October 2019, more than three years after the referendum result and less than 3 years before the next general election.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn can stand back from the Brexit shambles and position Labour as the party best placed to implement change. In truth the Labour family is divided on both Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership but out of the spotlight these squabbles carry on largely un-seen. One intangible advantage for Labour is timing: the party has been out of power since 2010, and the claim that it is Labour’s turn to govern could resonate with swing voters. The Party’s polished Our Town advert neatly aligns nostalgia for Britain pre-globalisation with the damage done to communities by Tory austerity and a promise of a fairer, more prosperous and generous-spirited country after Brexit.

With over half a million members, Labour can position itself as an energetic movement with shoulders wide enough to deliver change in every town and city in the country. According to the House of Commons Library, Conservative membership was 124,000 in April 2018 with an average age of 58. The difference in the size and reach of the parties’ membership will matter as we enter a post-Brexit political context. Social and workplace changes driven by globalisation and technology have left millions living with a sense of isolation, occupying communities that feel fragmented and lacking in purpose (Labour’s Our Town says that Britain’s communities have had ‘the heart ripped out of them’). Seen from these communities, Westminster politics appears bafflingly tribal, rude and inward-looking. To win trust, both political parties will need to make a meaningful connection with these voters in their communities, and demonstrate that they can act as drivers of individual and community renewal.

If ‘take back control’ is the mandate of the 2016 referendum, what should it actually mean for these millions of disadvantaged voters? Maurice Glasman, the Labour Peer and leave supporter, believes that they want to see “that family, place and work—the things that matter to them—matter to their rulers.” Michael Turner, Research Director at BMG, a polling firm, identifies three common themes emerging from the vast amount of qualitative and quantitative research carried out since June 2016: voters want the opportunity to create more wealth and a better standard of living for themselves and their communities, they want their communities to be able to take more decisions about issues affecting them, and they want to live in stronger, more cohesive communities.

After March 2019 we need to focus on building a society that is wealthier, fairer and more united. This is the challenge facing everyone in Britain. Most voters are impatient for change. Both political parties will need to prove why they should be trusted with national renewal. Positioned outside the Brexit negotiations, Labour has the advantage. Changing leader won’t be enough for the Tories; to re-build a winning voter coalition the party will also need to learn a new way of practising local politics. The failure of David Cameron’s Big Society to take root demonstrates that a Conservative programme of community organisation and action must be able to flourish without the patronage of the leader’s office. Success – for either party – will require a willingness to listen to voters, the ability to serve their interests with sincerity and efficiency, and time.

Speaking in Cape Town on Tuesday, the Prime Minister argued that it is in the world’s interests to help create jobs for Africa’s burgeoning young population and committed £4bn to the task. She is right. It is no secret to young Africans that rewarding employment, a decent place to live and the prospect of one day raising a family are considered reasonable expectations by their cohort living in more prosperous parts of our inter-connected world. If they can find these things in Africa, then all is well. If they find unemployment and squalor then many will feel compelled to look elsewhere (who wouldn’t?), and Europe will be their preferred destination. Africa cannot afford to lose ambitious men and women. And Europe doesn’t want them. This is the pressing complexity behind the Prime Minister’s trade mission.

A good outcome for Africa’s new generation is achievable. States like Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria have some of the fastest GDP growth rates in the world. The African Union is pushing a Continental Free Trade Area which would remove tariffs from 90% of goods traded across Africa, allegedly boosting intra-African trade by 52% by 2022. There are now 400 African companies with revenues of more than $1 billion and 700 with revenues of more than $500 million. Nigeria’s Dangote Cement, Africa’s biggest producer of cement, is expected to apply for a London listing in 2019. Technology is transforming how Africa’s farmers grow and market their food, while most of the continent’s fertile land remains undeveloped. And Africa is becoming a steadily more stable and secure investment location as democracy and the rule of law becomes the norm.

Over 50% of Africans now live in cities, and the pace of urbanisation is increasing. Nine of the world’s fastest growing cities are African: Bamako, Lagos, Dar es Salaam, Lubumbashi, Kampala, Luanda, Kinshasa, Nairobi and Antananarivo – these megacities are establishing themselves as dynamic centres of national and regional trading networks. Nigeria alone is predicted to account for around 35% of growth in the world’s urban population to 2050. Urbanisation experts Daniel Hoornweg and Kevin Pope have predicted that Lagos will become the world’s largest city by 2100. For most Africans, the quality of their life experience will depend upon the quality of the cities they are born in.

In the developed world the established view is that urbanisation is closely linked to rising prosperity because of the positive economic consequences of agglomeration – the proximity of a high-density population, infrastructure, businesses and skills. City authorities in Europe and the US are expected to manage the correct balance of vertical and horizontal development, combining an efficient use of space with usable infrastructure networks that allow businesses and citizens to form connections, clusters and agglomerations around a city centre and maximise access to civic services and jobs. Mobility is a key issue, with a constant emphasis on developing efficient transport systems like London’s Crossrail to connect commuters with their workplaces. In developed countries cities have become steadily bigger, richer and more culturally complex, sucking up government money for new projects and developing ever-stronger political identities. Capitals like London and New York are run as quasi city states by charismatic mayors.

Africa’s megacities have none of the luxuries – incumbent prosperity, manageable population growth, tough planning laws, well-funded municipal local governments – enjoyed by countries like the UK. Cash-strapped, most city authorities are plagued by short-termism, corruption and weak land governance, while national governments are often unsupportive. The African Development Bank Group (AfDB) has identified a lack of local government capacity as urban Africa’s biggest challenge. Some cities have attempted reforms: the Lagos Innovation Council is trying to create business friendly ecosystems across the city, and Angola’s sovereign wealth fund is sponsoring an African Mayoral Award to reward best practice in local government. But these initiatives scratch the surface.

Weak urban governments struggle to control the trajectory of their city’s development. This is a deadly serious problem. Africa’s megacities are growing horizontally rather than vertically, creating vast urban sprawl. Cities like Kinshasa and Lagos possess crumbling city centres surrounded by dense informal settlements with non-existent infrastructure or civic services. Poor transport infrastructure makes commuting between the centre and residential areas slow (many have no choice but to walk, or take expensive taxis), and fragments the city into disparate communities. Instead of adding density to the centre by building vertically, developers choose greenfield sites on the edge of the sprawl to site middle class accommodation and business parks. The result is cities with low economic density and high living costs that struggle to function as a coherent, integrated unit, are unable to trigger the benefits of agglomeration, and are poorly connected with the regional and global economy.

Without transformative interventions Africa’s megacities will fail to become engines of economic development. Instead they will trap tens, maybe hundreds of millions of Africans in urban poverty, and force millions more to migrate away from their homes and families in search of something better.

The answer is urgent investment in municipal government, tougher planning and building regulations, comprehensive infrastructure building programmes and billions of pounds in funding.

This challenge creates an opportunity for the UK. Alongside our expertise in development aid, Britain has skills in urban planning and design, transport systems, local government and education. London is possibly the greatest agglomeration the world has ever seen, and a global centre for everything from infrastructure financing to fintech. In places like the Golden Triangle, connecting London, Oxford and Cambridge we may be about to create a wealth cluster to rival Silicon Valley. In Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield and Middlesbrough we have newly elected metro mayors ambitious to promote their city’s expertise and forge new international links. UK universities have been leaders in developing innovative relationships overseas.

Britain’s urban experience is far from perfect, and our expertise won’t always apply to Africa’s crowded, chaotic cities but if we really want to make a difference, this is where we should focus our help.

Joining the Comprehensive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade agreement between eleven Pacific Rim states including Australia, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand and Vietnam, offers one possible opportunity for the UK to act out its global ambitions, while also drawing closer to a chunk of the Asia-Pacific economy. London has been holding informal talks with TPP countries but UK accession will have to wait until Brexit has happened, and it is not yet clear that the TPP will accept a European member, though the government argues that there is no geographical restriction to Britain joining, and the UK’s status as a G7 economy and a founder member of the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Development Bank count in its favour.

There is another emerging economic grouping which the UK should start taking more seriously – the Indian Ocean Rim. The Indian Ocean’s littoral states, stretching from South Africa in the west to Australia in the east, include some of the world’s fastest growing economies with a combined population of over 2.7bn people. By 2050, almost half of the world’s population will live around the ‘Ocean of the Centre’. Toronto University’s Global Cities Institute predicts that the Rim’s biggest cities – Karachi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Dhaka – will be home to over 142m people by the middle of the century.

These disparate coastal communities share waterfront access to the world’s third largest ocean and the monsoon trade routes which have for centuries linked the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia with the broader Asian continent to the east and Europe to the west. Today the Indian Ocean carries 50 percent of global seaborne trade and two thirds of the world’s oil shipments. Almost 40% of the world’s offshore petroleum is now produced in the Indian Ocean, and there is growing competition to mine the precious metals and minerals buried beneath its seabed. The Indian Ocean’s Blue Economy, including tourism and fisheries, is potentially huge but vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change, over-fishing, plastics pollution and fresh water scarcity.

While the Pacific Ocean’s geopolitics are increasingly weighed-down by intensifying rivalry between the US and China, the Indian Ocean’s politics feel open and unresolved. New Delhi regards the Indian Ocean as its backyard but China’s Maritime Silk Road, which connects China to the Middle East, Africa and Europe via a secure network of coastal bases, and Beijing’s proactive diplomacy across the region is a snub to the idea of Indian hegemony. China’s $46bn investment in Pakistan’s deep-water port at Gwadar and a development corridor connecting Gwadar with China’s One Belt, One Road is exacerbating tensions between Islamabad and Modi’s India. To the west of Gwadar runs the Straits of Homuz, a narrow opening between Iran and Oman which connects the Persian Gulf’s oil wells with the open seas. Around 30% of the world’s seaborne-traded crude oil passes through the Straits every day, making it one of the global economy’s most fragile choke points, and a marshalling point for the navies of the US, Europe and Iran. Over 3,000 miles to the east is another choke point, the Malacca Straits through which over 100,000 commercial ships a year pass as they travel between the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

The Indian Ocean Rim countries vary in size, economic development and military capability, as well as religious and cultural affiliation; they also identify with sub-regions (Australasia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, West Asia and Eastern & Southern Africa), and are members of local trade arrangements and co-operative mechanisms including the Association of South East Asian Nations, the Southern African Development Community and the Gulf Co-operation Council. The kaleidoscopic nature of the Rim’s waterfront limit will always limit regional integration but what unites them is the 44,000 square mile ocean, and the threats, opportunities and responsibilities that it brings them. In 2015 total trade and investment between IORA countries reached USD $777 billion, up 300 percent from 1994. This represented 10% of global GDP, and 13% of global foreign direct investment for a region that is home to 35% of the world’s population. Greater intra-regional collaboration to boost trade and development, and manage the ocean and its resources, is inevitable.

With 21 member states (including South Africa, India, Indonesia, Australia and Iran) and nine dialogue partners (including the US, China, the UK, France and Germany) the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) is emerging as the IOR’s primary forum, and the only one that seeks to act on a regional basis. Operating from a small but high-powered Secretariat in Mauritius, the IORA was formed in 1997 to promote sustainable growth, regional trade and increase economic co-operation across the region. For many years the IORA went un-noticed, but this changed in 2015 when Australia assumed the 2-year rotating presidency and convened, for the first time, a meeting of the IORA’s foreign ministers. In 2017 the heads of state and government met to commit themselves to intensify regional collaboration in maritime security, fisheries management, disaster relief and trade and investment. Their host, Indonesia’s President Jokowi called the Jakarta Declaration a “a milestone in the renewal of commitment by IORA countries to intensify IORA cooperation.” South Africa currently holds the two-year presidency, and has sustained the focus on growing the region’s Blue Economy. In 2019 Pretoria hands over the presidency to the UAE.
As a global trading economy the UK has always had an interest in maintaining the free flow of maritime traffic across the Indian Ocean, and in growing the region’s prosperity. The UK operates a permanent naval base in Bahrain on the Persian Gulf; 50% of Royal Navy units deployed at any one time will be operating in the Indian Ocean. The UK and Indian Ocean Rim’s history are intertwined – thirteen of the IORA’s 21 member states are also members of the Commonwealth. Today the UK is one of the largest investors in the region: a ‘top 3’ investor in South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, India, Bangladesh and Australia; the fifth largest investor in Singapore and the seventh largest investor in Indonesia. The region presents enormous opportunities for British expertise in renewable energy, climate science and conservation, AI, urban planning, telecoms, financial and business services, public service delivery and education. Around 7.5% of the UK population has an Indian Ocean heritage, including the Home Secretary and the Mayor of London, while over 1.5 million British expatriates currently live across the region (principally in Australia, South Africa, Pakistan, India, the UAE and Singapore).

This deep engagement is taking place without much help from Westminster and Whitehall. According to Hansard, the words ‘Indian Ocean’ have been spoken just 225 times in both Houses of Parliament since 2008, and during the last decade only 13 Written Statements by British ministers have made reference to the Indian Ocean (almost all dealing with UK’s treatment of the Chagos Islanders, who were forcibly deported from the British Indian Ocean Territory to allow for the UK and US to develop Diego Garcia as a military base). The phrases ‘Indian Ocean Rim’ and ‘Indian Ocean Region’ have not been used in Parliamentary debate in the last 10 years. While France is applying to become a full member of the IORA via Reunion’s status as a French overseas department, and Germany has recently committed a team of diplomats to join IORA’s Secretariat, the UK appears to be on the side-lines. Yet the IORA’s overstretched Secretariat could use British expertise and maybe some money, and the UK could use an opportunity to contribute towards the region’s future stability and prosperity, and win friends in the IORA’s increasingly influential fora.

There is much at stake for both markets. Of the ten non-EU countries sending students to UK universities in 2016-17, five are in the Indian Ocean Region (Malaysia, India, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Thailand). Indian Ocean economies like India and Singapore are already important investors in the UK – Tata, an Indian firm that owns Jaguar Land Rover is now the UK’s largest manufacturer. The owners of Manchester City, Leicester City, QPR, Reading, Sheffield Wednesday and Blackburn Rovers are all based on the Indian Ocean. A stable, prosperous Indian Ocean Rim is likely to disproportionately benefit the UK. But if the region falters, UK interests and citizens could be at risk. The dynamics of the region will shape the 21st century; Global Britain needs to start meaning something.

For decades the CAP has sponsored a bureaucratic approach to food production that has paid out subsidy to farmers on the basis of land ownership, regardless of a farmer’s innovation and his or her environmental stewardship. Meanwhile, the CFP has reduced UK fish stocks and hollowed-out our coastal communities. DEFRA Secretary of State Michael Gove is proposing to replace the CAP with a regime that will award farmers and land managers public money for delivering ‘public goods’. He has also pledged to regain control over UK waters and fish stocks, though this won’t be possible until the transition period ends in December 2020.

On 15^th March Prosperity UK brought together over 300 farmers, environmental campaigners, conservationists, agri-tech entrepreneurs, research scientists and green investors to discuss the proposition that Green Brexit represents a new era for farming, fishing and the environment. This is a diverse group with a range of views on Brexit; what brings it together is the opportunity to replace the CAP and CFP with something better. Some are inspired by Michael Gove’s ambitious 25 Year Environment Plan, others remain sceptical that it is deliverable but there is a consensus that Michael Gove is moving in the right direction, and a sense that everyone at the conference was willing him to keep going.

Here’s what I learned:

(1) The UK is an established leader in many ‘green’ areas including climate change science, sustainable finance, ocean conservation and agri-tech. The entrepreneur Craig Sams argued that London was the obvious location for a new global carbon market. If Green Brexit mainstreams sustainable innovation, and informs a new approach to boosting productivity this will enhance the UK’s influence in sustainable economics. The world-wide success of Blue Planet II has demonstrated the UK’s soft power. International collaboration is vital as we face threats that cross borders, requiring collective action and response. The UK Government should seize this opportunity to project a vision of Global Britain as catalyst for new alliances, international protocols and rule-setting. One idea discussed at the conference by Polymateria, a UK start up pioneering biodegradable plastics, and the insurance giant Aviva is a “London Protocol” to phase out the use of plastics, and introduce new standards for biodegradable and compostable packaging.

(2) The environmental lobby is pinching itself that a Tory Secretary of State is proposing a coherent policy programme that connects clean air, restored soil health, animal welfare and agri-tech. To green ears Michael Gove sounds urgent, pragmatic and generous-spirited. There was some surprise that the link between good environmental stewardship, sustainable food production and public health wasn’t more clearly stated in DEFRA’s Plan, but the mood among environmental campaigners like Tony Juniper is upbeat. As the CEO of one NGO told me, “I’ve spent 25 years as an anti-government protester and suddenly I find myself agreeing with DEFRA.”

(3) The farming and land-owning lobbies are more cautious. Until they get more detail, Michael Gove’s talk about a new land subsidy regime based on ‘public money for public goods’ sounds unsettling. What precisely is meant by public goods, how are they achieved, and this achievement measured? Is food not a public good, asked Minette Batters, the NFU’s new President? The possibility that new trade agreements will expose UK farmers to lower cost food is another uncertainty. A seminar discussion on the role of financial markets left some wondering whether there was sufficient investment capital patient enough to underwrite a transition by farmers to more sustainable practices.

Few farmers are rich, most depend upon subsidy though they don’t like it. The farming lobby groups like the NFU say that farmers take their responsibilities as guardians of landscape and biodiversity very seriously. DEFRA’s focus on restoring natural capital (a value fixed to natural assets like rivers, hedgerows, soils and species that could be used to measure the quality of our environment) is another example of UK innovation – the concept was developed by the British economist Professor Dieter Helm, who spoke at the conference – but it represents another break with business as usual. ‘If money is stripped too quickly out of the profitable elements of the industry, we will endanger not only farmers, but also the nation’s food supply chain, rural communities, and ultimately the countryside … profitable farming and landowners only, will deliver the environmental renaissance we all want’ is an approximation of what I heard from several farmers.

(4) Droving the environmentalists and the food producers down the same path feels difficult but do-able. These two interest groups have traditionally felt wary of one another and for different reasons each regards itself as being uniquely threatened. Both are experienced Whitehall skirmishers. But there is already common-ground: both groups accept Brexit is happening and see it as an opportunity to make Britain greener and cleaner; both value the fact they have an ambitious thinker like Michael Gove as their Secretary of State; no one opposes his vision of ‘a more rational, and sensitive agriculture policy, which promotes environmental enhancement, supports profitable food production and contributes to a healthier society’. Michael Gove’s challenge is now to reassure the farmers that his ‘agricultural transition’ won’t hurt their bottom line.

(5) During a seminar discussion on reducing carbon emissions, Bruce Huber, a London based investor in energy technology and infrastructure, warned that the UK’s decision to leave the EU had already caused ‘headwinds’, switching the UK from the gateway into the world’s largest energy market to a single domestic market, which is fragmented, opaque and lagging in R&D investment. The UK’s strengths in innovation, regulatory frameworks and financing should make it a leader in developing the next wave of energy technology but first the government must urgently provide a bold UK energy strategy, meaningful amounts of investment capital and incentives for firms to invest here. Without this urgent action, the UK risks becoming an importer of new energy technologies, and an exporter of jobs.

Alex Hickman is Director of Prosperity UK

You can watch videos of all of the Green Brexit Conference Speeches and Seminar Discussions here.

Having campaigned against an EU exit (and UKIP) for years, it took a lot of heart-ache to own up to the idea that I was a leaver. Several months out from last year’s referendum, two questions helped me cross the line: was permanent membership of the European Union the logical resting place for Britain as a democratic nation? And was EU membership the best way of building a society that was prosperous, fair, secure and a valuable partner to the rest of the international community? After some soul-searching I answered both with a negative. The referendum result showed that most of those who cared enough to vote on that day felt the same way and as a result walking away from the EU has become government policy. Viewed from Sunderland, Barking and Swindon, Brussels’ attempt to create trusted institutions and a reassuring narrative for the twentieth century has failed.

But what are we walking towards? This is the question of our time and we now need the widest possible number of people to engage with what the political economist and Blue Labour founder Maurice Glasman has called national renewal. Our political class now has an extraordinary chance to put their creative energy to work but a scrappy, ill-tempered referendum has left deep bitterness, and a small but powerful minority of politicians seem determined to try and derail Brexit instead of helping to make it a success.

A 52:48 result was always going to be painful, but the result was decisive and since June 2016 the coalition of content leavers has grown much larger than 17.4 million. EU diehards like Tony Blair and Lord Heseltine have the right to think Brexit is a mistake, they have no mandate to stop it, nor rubbish it. Blair dismisses the leave vote as the nasty by-product of dangerously ideological campaigners and irrational voters – a demagogic “insurgency” by the extremes on both the right and the left who share a thick-headed hostility to globalisation and those in power. I am sure this analysis helps some feel better about themselves but it is not just ungenerous, it is wrong. And it is deeply divisive.

By urging the well-heeled refuseniks of Richmond and Bath to join him in trying to spoil Brexit, Tony Blair challenges the legitimacy of British democracy and weakens the negotiating hand of his successor as prime minister. Seven months after the referendum an ICM poll revealed that 68% of voters wanted the government to get on with Brexit. Just 15% disagreed. If Tony Blair really wants what he calls the “political centre” to re-connect with voters, he should start by respecting their views.

Getting on with it means a clean Brexit which decouples the UK from the EU’s Single Market and Customs Union, and enables us to re-engage with Europe and the rest of the world as a sovereign nation. Blair, Heseltine and co. want to keep us in the Single Market and the Customs Union because they know that inside both we are effectively still in the EU, required to accept free movement, pay in to EU budgets and accept EU law. But taking back control is what a majority of the electorate voted for, and this is where we must start from if we are to rebuild trust in Westminster politics. This decoupling doesn’t stop Britain from being a European country, nor does it end the friendship and solidarity we will always share with our neighbours and strategic allies. Britain’s engagement with Europe does not end here, it just changes.

On the brink of fundamental change, our generation has a unique opportunity to do good for our country and the rest of the world. Intense moments of national soul-searching happen rarely in mature democracies like ours. It took war-time destruction to force bold responses such as the NHS, West Germany’s federal constitution or Japan’s economic revolution. We should use Brexit as a catalyst for something similarly progressive.

Britain is broken in many ways: a London-based political system that has lost touch with its  electorate, an absence of opportunity in many communities where people feel left behind, public services that are not meeting the high standards we set for them. How can Brexit’s disruption be best used to devolve more control to Britain’s nations, cities and counties? How should extra resources be invested in the NHS, and excellent schools, apprenticeships and universities be made available to everyone? How does the north of England get its Brexit dividend, how should this be used? And as Britain champions global free trade, how do we build an economy that provides well paid, rewarding employment in an age of digitalisation and AI?

All of these questions need answers. In this unfrozen moment in our history, we are free to plan and to act. Maurice Glasman argues for the restoration of a human scale and emphasis to our politics. Leavers were motivated by the wish “to see the renewal of national institutions and a recognition that family, place and work – the things that matter to them – matter to their rulers.” If Glasman is right, then June 23rd 2016 represents a  moment when the people of this country shrugged off a remote bureaucracy because they felt it placed legal uniformity and the convenience of multinational business above their needs as men and women. Surely we have it in ourselves to create a more warm-hearted settlement? We can now change Britain for the better but to make this happen all of us – whichever way we voted in June 2016 – need to come together.

Now the country has millions of reluctant leavers. Almost all of them deserve praise for respecting the fact that the referendum was decisive. Politics always creates winners and losers, what distinguishes democracies is that losers accept a result they do not like. The referendum was raucous and hard-fought, and many wish the debate had been more thoughtful and wide-ranging. But few voters were left unaware that there was something very important at stake, nor could they have missed the principal arguments made by each side. On June 23^rd millions voted in historic numbers for change and soon the Prime Minister will trigger Article 50 and begin to negotiate our exit from the EU.

The Leave voters I’ve met since the referendum (as part of Change Britain’s research programme I’ve interviewed over 100 men and women in working class communities across England) want a sovereign parliament. They also want an immigration system that is rigorous and applies the same rules to migrants coming from inside and outside the EU. I haven’t met a leave voter who thinks we should “pull up the drawbridge” – everyone has a story about an EU migrant whom they admire because s/he works so hard. As long as there is a controlled and fair process then good luck to those who want to try and come to Britain.

The voters I’ve met also support free trade and have confidence in the ability of British business to compete around the world. They are generally optimistic about Britain’s potential, they just want to see their country deliver more and quicker because they are ambitious for themselves and their children, and like the rest of us they only have so much time.

The working class Remain voters I’ve spoken to have a strikingly similar outlook to Leave voters and both groups now want to see the government “get on with the job”. Both groups also hold politicians in depressingly low esteem but they also recognise that delivering Brexit is not going to be easy. Get the job done and Theresa May’s government will have earned their respect, and Westminster has a chance to begin to repair its frayed connections with working class Britain. Fudge it and British politics could end up looking dangerously torn. There’s still a lot at stake.

Of course there’s a lot at stake – that’s the bloody point, argue those who never wanted this in the first place. Given the scale and exaggeration of the Remain campaign’s scare tactics it’s not surprising that some people still feel anxious. The process is complex and unprecedented, and many of Brexit’s benefits won’t be realised for years. But if we take stock of what’s happened since June there’s a lot that should reassure those who voted remain that things are going to be okay, and perhaps persuade them that we might have done something extraordinarily exciting.

First, Project Fear was nonsense. Instead of tipping backwards into recession the UK was the fastest growing economy in the G7 last year. Despite Brexit. The Bank of England has now upgraded its 2017 growth forecast to 2% (it forecast 0.8% back in August) and raised its forecasts for 2018 (1.6%) and 2019 (1.7%).

Businesses dislike the current level of uncertainty but international firms from Google to Nissan, Jaguar Land Rover and Novo Nordisk have pledged new investments in the UK. TheCityUK, the lobby group that campaigned for Remain is now calling Brexit a “once in a generation opportunity: for the UK while Michel Barnier, the EU’s lead Brexit negotiator has acknowledged that the City, with its deep capital reserves and unrivalled skill-base, is an irreplaceable resource for EU firms and governments. Business people like Sir Paul Marshall and Lord (Jonathan) Hill, who campaigned on different sides, are now coming together to work out how we use Brexit to make our economy stronger and more resilient. And the Legatum Institute’s Special Trade Commission led by the timely and magnificent Shanker Singham is beginning to illuminate the wide horizons awaiting Britain outside the EU’s Customs Union. If we can stick to the plan set out by the prime minister in her Lancaster House speech then we have the opportunity to become the world’s free trade impresario, unlocking a new wave of trade agreements which would boost the global economy and improve livelihoods from Sofia to Senegal.

Second, Britain’s values haven’t changed. We’ve voted to leave the EU – an organisation that Remain campaigners showed very little enthusiasm for. That’s all we’ve done. Since the referendum we’ve swapped a male one nation Conservative prime minister for… a female one nation Conservative prime minister. Last month Theresa May made a big speech at Davos. Did she deny climate change or ban trade unions? No. She spoke in support of liberalism and free trade while also urging the world’s business leaders to recognise the frustration of ordinary people and help ensure that the benefits of economic success are there for “all our citizens”.

Six months after Brexit Britain’s prime minister interprets the referendum result as a mandate to remind global CEOs that economic inequality is a problem and that their businesses have a responsibility towards their employees. Oh and by the way Brexit Britain is committed to upholding a rule based global order, supporting multi-lateral institutions like Nato, the UN and WTO and leading the fight against modern slavery. This followed the prime minister’s Lancaster House speech when she promised that Brexit would protect both UK workers’ rights and the rights of EU nationals in the UK as we left the EU. Quelle catastrophe!

Third, outside the EU Britain will exert more influence, not less. As an independent country we will discover that much of Britain’s elite massively (and weirdly) underestimate our influence. The idea that Britain still has things to share with the world – a habit for global engagement and familiarity with international institutions, political nous, military, diplomatic and security muscle, science and technologies, development expertise, language, money, creative freedoms – and that much of this good stuff was being squandered by membership of a self-absorbed, snagged, muffled-eared EU was another reason for me to back Leave. Inside the EU we are hamstrung by problems (the Eurozone crisis, free movement, political extremism) of the EU’s own making, and which only the EU can solve. Soon we will be out of the EU’s way, free to help our close neighbours as best we can while also building the new alliances and coalitions needed to improve international relations.

The prime minister’s controversial visit to the White House was an important first step. Of course there was realpolitik and self-interest in her visit, but look at what she achieved: immediately after their meeting President Trump committed himself to supporting Nato and ceded control of military interrogation to his Defence Secretary. British influence in action? Well, something happened. As we re-learn the arts of an independent foreign policy we will get better at this and more sure-footed about operating alone and in concert with allies. Hopefully our diplomats will re-discover the optimism and sense of possibility that once gave the FCO its famous chutzpah. Now we’re all sharing Planet Trump the world could use a resourceful, purposeful and wide awake UK.

Finally, the referendum result and everything that has happened since has begun to jolt our politics back into life. By facilitating such an ill-tempered referendum, absorbing its disruptive result and processing Brexit through the courts and parliament, peoples’ frustrations and desire for change have been channelled into the political mainstream. The prime minister of Brexit Britain is a Remain-supporting vicar’s daughter, not Nigel Farage. In France, the Netherlands, Italy and even Germany nationalist, anti-immigrant and anti-EU parties led by charismatic individuals are on the march. Inspect the House of Commons and the only significant nationalist presence is the SNP. The British centre-ground is pragmatic, unionist and fair-minded. Tories and Labour share a commitment to the NHS, want to build more houses, are pre-occupied by narrowing the north-south divide, improving British infrastructure and raising the productivity of British industry. By whipping the Article 50 Bill through parliament Jeremy Corbyn has shown that he doesn’t want to surrender Brexit to the Conservatives. He is right – Labour should develop its own narrative around Brexit and the national renewal it makes possible.

This is 1945 all over again. Our democracy needs work: power is too centralised and Westminster’s authority has been undermined by decades of EU membership but we can see it adapting to reflect the will of the people. Britain’s value and genius starts with this democratic instinct which has nurtured tolerance, individual liberty and respect for good institutions that have been allowed to evolve over centuries. Outside the EU this instinct can flourish and we can become a fairer, more prosperous and more generous community, a better neighbour and a resource for the world.

Alex Hickman is co-Director of Change Britain. He blogs at www.stuff-happens.org.