RUTHFULLY YOURS

After weeks of knife-edge Conservative Brexit drama, Trump visitations and Labour anti-Semitism crises, today’s BBC homepage offered comment on “blood moon” sightings and the longest heatwave in Britain’s history since the infamous summer of 1976. Given the weather, perhaps it is indeed a good thing that the hot air from Westminster is being vented elsewhere for a change. But rather than using the summer as a time of malaise, perhaps our politicians should consider it an opportunity to do something different and more worthwhile.

There are few other periods in our 24/7 society when our leaders get a chance to take a break from the frenetic pace of political life today. They should use it to recharge, but also to think. For there is currently a policy vacuum in the heart of British politics that requires filling urgently.

Ever since the EU referendum of 2016, the political agenda has been filled with but one issue: Brexit. The one attempt our political parties had to refocus attention – the General Election of 2017 – turned out disastrously when the British public returned an unimpressed verdict on their efforts through a hung Parliament. Since then, neither major party – nor any of the minor ones – have come up with a political idea that has really caught the imagination.

This needs to change. And soon. For in just a few short months – and however it is decided – Brexit will be upon us. Even were there to be a miraculous conversion of public opinion towards remaining in the European Union, which was then somehow given voice in a referendum, the effect would still be the same: the period of political purdah occasioned by the vote of 2016 will be over. And people will once again look to the need to govern this country and make it a better place to live.

It will be the politicians who understand this now, rather than when the moment is already upon them and it is too late, who will be the ones to prosper in the brave new Britain of April 2019.