Jayne Dowle: After phoney war, Brexit battle of Britain begins

We can be forgiven for being a bit blasé about this major political milestone. The past six months or so have been something of a phoney war. We knew the outcome of the historic EU referendum but it seemed to be having little impact on our day-to-day lives.

Granted, there have been a few panics. In June, the buyer of my house, for example, was hit straight between the eyes by Brexit-panic. He was selling a property in Croydon in order to purchase mine in Barnsley. The decision to leave the EU sent investors fleeing from London and the South East. As a result he lost his original buyer, and it took months to find someone else brave enough to take the plunge.

Still, most of us who travelled to Europe on our summer holidays managed to get there and back without major incident, except rather fewer euros for our pound. And if the European tourists thronging our major cities, seaside resorts and places of interest were anything to go by, they weren’t put off by Britain’s cold shoulder.

Then, in October, there was a bit of a to-do with Tesco and Unilever which resulted in a temporary nationwide shortage of Marmite. Some of us might think that this was a good thing. I suppose it depends on your taste.

Seriously, in the weeks immediately following the outcome of the vote, I did hear a lot of anxiety from friends who run their own businesses, especially those who have anything to do with financial services. Yet, even in this sector, the panic gradually subsided and things carried on.

Indeed, there is a certain amount of evidence to suggest that business has never been as good. I was speaking to a recruitment consultant in Barnsley the other week who currently has so many jobs on her books that she has no chance of filling them all. If this is Brexit Britain, what do we have to worry about?

Except of course, it wasn’t Brexit Britain. The period we have just lived through has been a hiatus during which the Prime Minister has taken her painstaking time to come up with a plan. Whether or not you agree with her “hard” stance, it is certainly a considered one.

It is now the job of Mrs May, her ministers and advisors to implement the full withdrawal from the European Union which she favours – or the Plan for Britain, as she calls it. And it is our job to give serious consideration to how this will impact about our own daily lives.

The big question is will it make a difference at all? There are 12 points to Mrs May’s negotiating strategy that cover all aspects of withdrawal from the way our national legislative structure will operate to immigration, workers’ rights and trade agreements. Much of what will be hammered out in the coming months will whirr along in the background without most of us having to give it a second thought.

We have to let the Prime Minister and her team get on the jobs they are paid out of the public purse to do. However, we must also give some thought to what living in a Britain out of Europe will be like. To achieve this, we should not give in to panic – as the stalwart Remain campaigners would have us do.

I think it would benefit us all to have a little list of concerns. I’m a mother of two children aged 11 and 14. My priority is that they will have a secure future, both in terms of education, jobs and personal safety. Terrorism and security are major issues for me. I want to know that Britain standing alone is as safe as it possibly can be.

In wider terms, I would like to be assured that my children will have the same opportunities to travel and experience life abroad as I enjoyed as a youngster. I don’t want them to grow up into ‘Little Englanders’ with no respect for other cultures or understanding of how the world is put together.

And in political and economic terms, I would like to know where all the public money is going to come from in future. The sterling regeneration of towns and cities in our region owes much to EU funding. As yet, we have no indication of where such cash will now flow from.

In all of the above, we cannot afford to remain blasé. We must hold our Members of Parliament accountable for the detailed bill of withdrawal which they will eventually vote on in the House of Commons.

If this is really a Plan for Britain, we must all become a part of it. The phoney war is 
now officially over. The real battle for the future of the country where we live, work, bring up children and grow 
old must now begin.