The deed is done, it's time to move on and build on what we have. Europe is yesterday's news let's focus on what is important. As a parliamentary democracy, there are a few things that unify us as a people. Our culture and language, although many would say that the Americans had appropriated the former and destroyed the latter, still as a people we know who we are, we do not define ourselves as who we are not, we define ourselves by who we are.
As a leading power, we have been out of the race for some time. We have our American cousins but families can be cruel even when being kind would achieve more. Our reality is that we must rely on ourselves to endure and thrive and the sooner we understand this the happier we will be.
Brexit has killed certain industries, some with historical significance but where we have been consistently terrible at it. The car industry is a good example, we produce(d) iconic vehicles but they are generally terrible -- does any doubt that the Range Rover is a fantastic car, but it breaks all the time? Britain's reputation is that it is a manufacturer of beautiful garage queens. But, we do have brilliant engineers for while we are not good at production we are brilliant at conception.
Our two biggest challenges are food and energy. Our demographics are not the best but we are far from being the worst. We leave that race to the Germans, Italians and Spaniards. 80% of the country's energy is imported, about 30% (net) from Norway and the balance from the United States. Under normal circumstances, we should be OK for a while, although energy security will be enhanced by increasing our links with our (treacherous?) American cousins. Which brings the food aspect to the game. The Americans will want access to our food markets, there is no doubt that this will happen, and the cost of food production in the US is far lower than in the UK. A simple fact when you consider the lower cost of extensive farming practice in the US against the intensive farming practiced here. For the people the impact will be dramatic, never mind food inflation, we would be talking about food deflation (at least for unprocessed food).
A nation is a group of competing demands and needs. the question the next administration has to answer is who wins and can we compensate the losers? Energy security will help all of us. There is no doubt that the American umbrella is the best. The reality of our country is that we need energy, we need a comprehensive energy policy that considers EVERYTHING. Even coal, but we can be smart about it too. Nuclear, and other types of green energy (yes I did that on purpose). I am not a big believer in solar power for the UK, the reason is obvious, just look out of your window right now...the sun is required for solar power to function. Our country will never be energy-independent, but we can be smart about it. In addition, we are no longer bound by the European limitation. Let's take this Brexit disaster for a spin and see what it can do for our nation.
Now that we are stuck with Brexit, we need to move on and make the system work as efficiently as possible for us, as a nation. Duties and customs should be optimized to produce the best domestic outcome, it is possible that building future reserves from duties on European imports to indemnify British farmers when the American foodstuff arrives. It may be difficult for some, but it also means that as a Nation we thrive. There is nothing wrong with that.
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