«By jingo chaps, that’s a thumping good victory. Now we can forge ahead with Brexit and be free again. None of those nasty Europeans mucking around in our affairs and telling us Brits what to do.

Yes, time to forge on and break free from Europe. Time to make Britan great again, determine our own destiny, make our own trade deals, decide who we want and don’t want living here.»

I’m still unclear about all this rhetoric about «Making Britain great again.»

Rumour has it that the next round of defence cuts will reduce the UK army to 60,000 and see the Royal Navy handing one of its two aircraft carriers over to the Yanks – so I daresay that Empire building and gunboat diplomacy are not an an option

«Britain will be free again» – sounds like we’ve been living the past forty years under foreign occupation and now we’ve been liberated from the dark forces of  European tyranny.

«We are free to stike our own trade deals» – a huge trade deal with the Yanks is in the offing, but obviously that will be on American terms. Will we all be eating chlorinated chicken in the near future?  We are in a position of weakness. It seems a bit bonkers to want to leave the largest trading group in the world, but we are about to do it.

«The UK can determine its own destiny» What is that about?

Discussing the UK with my students this week.

Downtown Abbey, Harry Potter and Peaky Blinders. Afternoon tea, enormous breakfasts and nice pubs, red double decker buses and everyone stands in queuse to wait for them. Brits always talk about the weather and it’ always rains. London is great and Scotland is beautiful (What about the vast swathes of the UK in between?)

So what is to become of us?

Will Brexit open the way for the UK to become the world’s largest living theme park?

Will we cuddle up the the Americans and become a kind of Orwellian Airstrip One?

Will Boris be selling Britain to the highest bidder?

I’m scared about the future for the place I once called home. A prime minister with a nineteenth century view handing out jobs to all his Eton cronies; A nasty wave of nationalism about to break, a rise in racism and thousands of «unwelcome» foreigners packing their bags to head home.

The tone for the future is very nicely set by headlines in three of this morning’s popular right wing papers. After reading this, all I can say is, good luck folks.

As for  my  anti-Brexit friends, I think you have hard times ahead as the majority cry victory. I’ve already heard the word “betrayal” used to qualify your pro-European stance. Things could get nasty.