Brexit needs clarity

THE crisis of Brexit may be only just starting. Those who thought the vote last June was the end of the matter are rapidly learning that it was in fact only the beginning.

It is odd that those who campaigned for British sovereignty as a supreme objective should now seem reluctant to involve Parliament in the process. And it is odder still that many of them still maintain a blind faith that departure from the EU will be nothing but sunlit uplands, unclouded by storms.

There needs to be a new sense of reasonableness in the debate about how we proceed. There is no point in the winning side denying that there is any economic cost to leaving, especially if we forgo access to the single market.

Yet the Government’s position on this is still unclear as we head rapidly towards the moment of no return. These are difficult and complicated times, and the Prime Minister needs to act cautiously and keep an open mind if she is to pilot the country safely through them.