IN May and June, I shared with my reader my musings on the referendum. Whether by choice or obligation, the Gazette adopted a neutral stance towards the vote and so I had to be balanced too. I was always leaning towards staying, though. Partly it was a better the devil you know thing, more so because nearly everyone who is paid to understand economics said we ought to stay and even more so because it was what those in the next generation (especially in my family) wanted. They’re the ones who really have to live with the consequences.

It seemed to me like those who were advocating that we had to leave to ‘take back control’ were living in cloud cuckoo land. They were harking back to a golden age that, if it existed at all, was only there when the sun never set on the British Empire and we could dispatch a gunboat or two to iron out any inconvenient wrinkles. They conveniently forgot that before we joined we were on our uppers. We had to go cap in hand to the EEC (as it was then) after our French friends had vetoed our original application. Sure, things didn’t improve overnight, but once Mrs Thatcher had sorted out our relationship, we’d been getting stronger and stronger. Was it a coincidence that this was as part of the European Union? I’m not convinced it was.

Maybe we need to change the voting age. If we can’t vote in the first 18 years of life, presumably due to inexperience, why should we be able to vote in what are (statistically) the last 18? Remove the vote from those over 65 and we may have had a different outcome. You could argue that we’d lose a lot of experience but people have had the best part of five decades to make a difference by that age; time to move over. But maybe that’s a different debate.

The Remain campaigners must bear a large part of the blame (or credit – let’s get a bit of balance back) for the result. That dreadful campaign that will be on many a political syllabus for years to come. They insulted and patronised those who were swaying towards leave and, in many cases, this caused an ‘up yours!’ reaction. I was 70:30 in favour of remaining when the campaign started but, by the end, I was probably 55:45. And that wasn’t down to the strength of the Brexit argument, but more to resentment at the almost constant implication that anyone who even thought about getting out was thick and racist.

We can’t ignore the racist aspect. Some people did vote for that awful reason. And it’s continued. Have you seen the footage of a chap in Lacock reacting to some idiot (I very much doubt they live in the village) who’s just told him to go back where he came from? The man is then heard to say “where … to Melksham?” It’s sad but it’s not why most people voted. The vast majority of British people are decent and tolerant and most who voted out did so for more honourable reasons.

Having said all that, we are where we are and all we can do it push on. We are a powerful economic force and the EU will miss us as much, if not more, than we miss them. They might scoff at BoJo’s appointment as Foreign Secretary, but I reckon that’s a bit of a nervous laugh. Some other members may well draw inspiration from us and we could be in a relatively safe place to watch the whole thing implode. Our financial markets have recovered early losses and, although it’s dropped, the pounds isn’t as weak as some feared; the big banks haven’t fled these shores either. As the old sign says, it’s time to ‘Keep calm and carry on’.