Brexit benefits will take time to happen

I AM tiring about all this negative rhetoric about ‘Brexit’. Whatever you voted, it was and is naïve to imagine that economic benefits would begin to accrue one day after we left (which was just last year).

It was not all about economic benefits or disadvantages, either, though the ‘Remain’ brigade still do not seem to understand that.

Indeed, it was the ‘political’ machinations which killed the benefits of the original great idea of a ‘common market’, sadly, and which led the majority to vote to leave.

However, just as with the Israelites passing into the Land of Canaan, the land of milk and honey, it will take a while for the old to be removed, the new to settle with a new infrastructure and then the new opportunities to be grasped and to begin to reward.

And no, this is not an eternal optimist speaking (though I am optimistic rather than pessimistic but my most boring trait is that I am rational and realistic, as I have to be in my work) but simply someone noting how we human beings cope with a significant change in our lives/business, or whatever.

We have left – end. Get over it and work with the opportunities in the new regime, and it is up to us to grasp those and to enjoy the best benefits from them – but, yes, they will take time to work their way through.

Sniping and griping about the ‘old ways’ won’t help anyone and nor will being petulant or impetuous like little children in early November hoping Christmas was the next day (or every day).

And remember, however wedded to the EU you were, every constraint we face in life or in business comes with opportunities too, and, until you change your mind-set and begin to recognise that about our past membership of the EU, you won’t repair and move forwards.

Indeed, it will affect your mental health if you keep regretting that we are no longer married to, but instead are divorced from, the EU.

Philip J Milton Trimstone, North Devon