As revolutions go Brexit is tame, so let’s calm down

What would it have been like to live through the Industrial Revolution? It was a period of rapid economic growth, innovation and great technological advancement. Yet it was also a period of great uncertainty in people’s lives and livelihoods. Mark Carney, the Bank of England governor, even went so far as to describe the 1860s – when the transition from an agrarian to a manufacturing economy appeared to stall – as “a lost decade”. It’s true that those who lived through those years will have had a mixed story to tell.

From the comfort of the 21st century though, most would agree that this tumultuous period was an obvious springboard to greater prosperity, and a dramatic rise in living standards. This is the thing about certainty – it only appears in retrospect.

Perhaps this goes some way towards explaining the apparent collective nervous breakdown we are experiencing around Brexit. Brexit is our revolution, and as revolutions go, it’s actually rather a tame one, but the undeniable uncertainty remains.

For the first time in nearly half a century, the sole responsibility of shaping our future has been placed in our hands. This is a time when we needed a determined government and a constructively critical opposition. Alas, we have neither and in this age of hyperconnectivity our leaders have very little chance of hiding their own muddled thinking around the most important political event of our times.

We are now in a bizarre situation where top-down confusion has created such an atmosphere of nervousness that every little slip on the part of our politicians is analysed and magnified a hundred fold. But because we’re all so confused about the big picture, we seem to have suspended all sense of objectivity and reason, and stand ready to lynch a politician for a poor choice of word in a live television interview. It’s all good drama, but that’s all it is.

The key point is that, as revolutions go, ours is really quite gentle. Amid all the breast-beating, figures published last week showed a 0.4 per cent growth in the third quarter of this year. It is a modest rise of 0.1 per cent over the first two quarters of 2017, but it’s moving in the right direction. Manufacturing experienced a 1 per cent expansion during the quarter, while the service sector seems to continue to put in a strong performance.

Research commissioned by the Mayor of London’s office found that the British financial technology start-up sector has seen a record investment of more than £825million since the beginning of the year, twice the amount seen in the same period in 2016, with London attracting more than five times the investment of any other European city. With people simply “getting on with it”, Metro Bank last week said its deposits (more than half being businesses accounts) rose by 10 per cent to £10.8billion, lending rising 11 per cent to £8.6billion. Even the skittish UBS announced on Friday that post-Brexit job relocations are “more and more unlikely”.

A major political event will always come with a period of uncertainty, while its ramifications take shape and the details of the final outcome become clear. The past few months indicate that our economy is resilient enough to weather this period. Can we all just calm down a little now? FOLLOW Dia Chakravarty on Twitter @DiaChakravarty;

at telegraph.co.uk/opinion

There are two wildly contradictory conceptions of Europe that manage to co-exist in current political fashion. The first, of which we hear much, is of the continent’s quite recent incarnation as an enlightened over-arching organisation: a liberal confederation of member states which transcends the old evils of nationalism and enmity, and actively repudiates its imperial past. This is, of course, the official Brussels doctrine subscribed to by most British Remainers. The New Europe is seen as the embodiment of a progressive ideal. Those who wish to declare independence from it, such as the British, or from one of its member states – such as the Catalonians – are throwbacks to a benighted (and dangerous) age in which quaint loyalties to ancient national identities divided the continent.

The other, a minority but very influential, view is that Europe as a historical entity remains a pernicious, oppressive cultural hegemony, snuffing out interest and a proper degree of respect for all those Bob was named winner of this year’s Cartoon Art Trust Awards prize for Political Cartooning

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