Brexit requires new breed of leadership

The EU has sometimes brazenly ignored the results of national referenda on new treaties. Opponents of the proposed European constitution in 2001, for example, saw it as federalist in its intent. The planned constitution was rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005.

The EU sidestepped this rejection on technicalities. Where the EU had originally cast the constitution as an attempt to throw out earlier treaties and start again, Union leaders now presented some of its main points as mere amendments to existing treaties. This new treaty, itself once rejected by the Irish, was eventually signed into law in Lisbon in 2009.

The EU has had its fair share of successes – most notably in promoting internal travel, dialogue, trade, security and above all peace. These should not be underappreciated – especially the last.

Most recently it has, however, shown arrogance in its handling of the migration question and its attempts to solve common problems through elitist back-channel tactics. Angela Merkel’s negotiations with Turkey, for example, were well intentioned, but they were perceived by some people in the EU as unrepresentative and unsupportable.

This perceived arrogance made it hard for friends of the EU to make a case in its defence during the UK’s referendum.

Boris Johnson, a biographer of Churchill after all, claims that the institution was fit for purpose when it was conceived. It is now, he says, no longer doing the right job for Britain.

Now that the UK has made its choice, its leaders must wind back any notions of elitism in their ranks. Inclusion must begin within the political classes themselves.

It would be helpful if the next Prime Minister were to call together a “government of all the talents”. Not in the formal, cabinet sense perhaps, but as an advisory group made up of eminent thinkers and doers who are prepared to place national interest above sectional concerns or self-promotion.

If media vox pops are to be believed, today’s result has left more than a few Brits feeling quite insecure about their future.

This was bound to happen, whatever the outcome. After all, this was not a poll on a five-year government; it proscribed an epochal national direction. What’s more, the vote was always expected to be a tight one, despite more bombastic noises from the markets and the bookies.

Arguably the success of the Leave campaign allows more room for insecurity, even among its own supporters, than a vote for the status quo might have done. The status quo is, after all, usually easier to live with than change – unless, of course, there is an external, existential threat to the nation as in a time of war.

Doubtless, the legendary British capacity for continuity will come to the fore and people will find ways to leave disagreements behind. Indeed, many leaders and supporters of the defeated side have already expressed a desire to work for the common cause going forward.