The nine lessons of Brexit

The stakes could not be higher now. We face the biggest political crisis for at least a couple of generations. The risks are now both a democratic crisis and an economic one. We just cannot go on as we have been: evading and obfuscating choices – indeed frequently denying, against all evidence, that there are unavoidable choices. And the public will understandably not, for a very long time, forgive a political class which on all sides of the divide fails to level with it on the choices being made.

This feels a rather unseasonal theme but as we are approaching Christmas I thought I would therefore talk about nine lessons we need to draw from the last two and a half years, if the next two and a half – indeed the next decade – are not to be even more painful.

I wish I could say that I thought these nine lessons were in the process of being digested.