Project Hope

Boris Johnson famously said that Winston Churchill would have voted for Brexit. The wartime leader’s grandson — staunch Remainer and Tory grandee Nicholas Soames — dismissed such claims as ‘appalling’ and ‘totally wrong’. This bad-tempered referendum rift between two traditionalist, Old Etonian Conservatives symbolises, somewhat incongruously perhaps, the broader state of the nation. Deep and traumatic divisions have been drawn between friends and families everywhere — and, of course, within political parties.

David Cameron’s dignified resignation speech has quickly given way to a grim determination to ‘Stop Boris’ from taking the Conservative crown and the Premiership. Labour, meanwhile, is in self-destruct mode, the parliamentary party in full rebellion against Jeremy Corbyn for his ineffective Remain campaign; which was unsurprising after a political lifetime spent needling the European Union.

Beyond domestic political pyrotechnics, the bigger picture is that the UK now faces an extremely complex negotiation with our soon-to-be-erstwhile EU partners. The rest of Europe — the entire world, in fact — is watching.