Cheer up. Brexit is a great opportunity

One of my favourite writers is Walter Ellis, Fleet Street veteran and contributor to Reaction. A lifetime of turning out peerless copy means he could write out the contents of the phone book and it would be insightful and funny. For the benefit of millennials, yes, there used to be a big book with every landline phone listed in alphabetical order. What’s a landline? Oh, go and Google it.

Walter ‎is also, on the great question of the day, what he terms a Remoaner. I find the term insulting to my friends who believe that the UK leaving the European Union is the worst thing that has happened to us Brits since the Black Death or the break up of the Beatles. Hardline Remainer or Remain Extremist are better terms surely?

In his latest piece for Reaction Walter says that the UK is going to have to make the best of a bad job. We are leaving the EU but must accept we are hopeless. Our population is so badly educated, he says, ‎that they can barely tie their own shoelaces. This is supposedly in constrast to France, where workers have done more work by close of play on a Monday than the Brits manage in a month. And the French are still relaxed enough to be in the bar by 5pm to discuss Proust with their colleagues over a nice glass of Macon.

On Reaction – which I edit – we’re pretty enthusiastically Brexity. I voted for it, it’s happening, and the hardline Remainers without Walter’s literary gifts are approaching self-parody territory, but we’re a broad church on this site and will publish a range of views. Who wants to read witless propaganda? Don’t answer that.

Even so there is a “we’ll all be murdered in our beds” quality‎ to the utterances of the most fear-ridden opponents of Brexit. Not only is it at odds with the practical reality – the UK is simply leaving a relatively new and not very effective set of political arrangements – but there seems to be no recognition that if anything Brexit is a terrific opportunity. We’re leaving the EU, not Europe.

Get it right and…

1) We’ll connect more with parts of the world that like us and want to co-operate and trade.

2) We’ll be doing the EU a favour, nudging a broken organisation to reform.

3) We’ll get on better with our friends in Europe who have had to listen to our moaning about the EU (moaning that was often correct, about the single currency for example) for decades. Now we can agree to disagree and get on with holidaying in each other’s countries and drinking wine.

4) We’ll‎ not have part-time disc jockey Nigel Farage in the European Parliament, which will do wonders for our reputation on the continent.

5) We’ll get a much better parliament at Westminster. This is already happening, as Brexit reawakens interest in sovereignty and increased scrutiny, rooted in a realisation that we are no longer going to subcontract the making of many of our laws.

The UK has plenty of problems – including the shortfall in social care‎ – that will not be solved by Brexit. It is not the answer to everything. But there is masses of potential. In technology, in biotech, in finance and FinTech, in logistics and in the digital economy (where the UK is miles ahead of the continent, try online shopping in Germany), in our best universities, in publishing and media, in architecture and the arts, in food and tourism, the UK is not a lost cause. Quite the opposite.

How to harness all this opportunity? We need a burst of energy and some confidence. A dash of the spirit of London 2012. A flash of Victorian can do get up and go. And Walter Ellis writing even more for Reaction.