SO WHAT'S NEXT?

The answer is no one has any idea. What’s worse no one even has a plan. It’s tempting to look into the future and write an Aldous Huxley dystopian vision of the world to come. It’s equally tempting to look at the centenary anniversary of the Somme and say “here we go again” or to say “this summer is like Britain wet and useless” like the England football team - “we are just a bunch of losers.”

There are certain realities, however, in our lives:

• Life will go on. The shock and dismay will end.
• Human resourcefulness always get us to good places…the EU is not the only answer.
• The time for analysis and philosophising is over.
• We live in a very fast moving world so making things happen fast is critical. Remember that line from the 1981 TV series Hill Street Blues? “Let’s do it to them before they do it to us”
• Or what ex-boss of GE Jack said:-

James Ashford, a Jack-the-lad online guru, described his son’s school sports day. An Intimidating experience for a six year old especially having to do the “Egg and Spoon Race”.

Watching previous races he realised all the kids spent a lot of time looking left and right to see how their friends were getting on…chaos…collaborative mediocrity. So James told his son…”Ignore the others look at me on the finishing line and run towards me.” It worked.

Great advice… stop worrying about what the world or anyone else thinks (by the way a lot of them think we are barmy, to be pitied or on the verge of crisis) decide what you want to achieve and go for it.  The greatest opportunity of our lives may lie in the fact that all around people are looking at each other wondering what to do next. This is a time when MBAs, PHDs and cleverness is a positive disadvantage.  Eat a plate of steak tartare, have a big Jack Daniels, light a cheroot, play the theme music of the “Magnificent Seven” or “The Great Escape” very, very loudly and go and kick ass.

Well you get the idea anyway.

This is a period as interesting as the 1980s when after the first shock of Thatcherism some realised it might be working; when the “Big-Bang” financial deregulation in 1983 turned gentlemen stockbrokers into pirates.  We may be entering a heady period of “lawlessness” where we behave as though those imaginary (mostly imaginary) shackles of EU bureaucracy are removed and we start to push the boundaries back and vigorously compete.

We can behave like that or, of course, we can mourn the passing of the most civilised half decade in the history of the world.

Well, we have no choice as enterprising people … do we?

And the final thing that’s clear is we must treat the politicians as contemptuously as they’ve treated us.

Ignore them and get on with it. You take control - not them - because they don’t get it.