After Brexit a lot of people have a lot of self-reflection to do. Overnight we went from a pro-immigration, liberal, tolerant country to one that is the opposite. At least, that is what it looks like to the outside world, and – tragically – that is what it looks like to many of our European and non-European immigrant friends and neighbours. Add the awful footage of a sizeable number of the England fans at Euro 2016 (in stark contrast to, say, the Irish, Swedish and Icelandic fans), chuck in the growing visibility of Neo Nazi groups and racist attacks, the spectacle of Tory leadership hopefuls fighting it out over who would be the most anti-immigration prime minister, and the bewildering state of Labour party politics, and Britain looks stunningly thin on redeeming features right now. We can be so much better than this. In fact, we have to be so much better than this or we are in for a very bitter and dangerous decade. And with a vote of 48 per cent to 52 per cent, all is not lost, of course. Yet there is no denying that we’re very far down a very dark road and we need the Brexit vote – and more specifically, the reason behind people’s Brexit vote – to be a wake-up call for us all.

I have often felt unconvinced by the presentation of an absolute, binary divide between Labour and the Conservatives. In a modern, progressive, democratic country, with free education and free health care, political similarity is understandable, even desirable. Take education: politicians argue about how to target resources, what should be on the curriculum or whether faith schools should be permitted, but no political party would ever argue, for example, that we should abolish free education for children. That is a good thing, a sign of political health and societal maturity. Until Brexit, it seemed progressives had won all the arguments on the fundamentals – minimum wage, human rights, pluralism, tolerance. To win an election the Tories had to adapt to the dominating centre ground of British politics, however antithetical it seemed to many of them. And yet today, six years since Labour lost power, many of those settled fundamentals are up for debate again, and not only (or even mostly) by politicians but, more concerning, by the population at large.

As the questions become more fundamental, the divisions in our politics get bigger and more pronounced, and as this happens the divisions within our society become starker and more dangerous. Each of these feeds the other and round and round we go until we are left with an utterly divided country, where extremes become the norm and where compromise – the intellectual soul of a humane society – becomes a dirty concept. But this has been a long process. We did not get here overnight, and there is no doubt that Labour blinked first. We relinquished the centre-ground and headed left, Cameron claimed it for Tories, they redefined it rightwards, we responded by shifting leftwards, and the more left we went, the more right they went, for years both parties subtly stoked the flames of grievance and discontent and blame that suited their own left or right narrative, answers were too often, implicitly or explicitly, ‘immigrants stole your jobs’ or ‘blame Thatcher’. Poorer communities were let down badly by politicians and trade union leaders who entrenched for generations a culture of disempowerment, anger and blame. It was an abdication of political leadership and a real betrayal of the poor.

To lead us out of this mess and heal the wounds that have been fostered now for many decades we need political leaders who feel in their bones the morality of pluralism, political compromise and a non-dogmatic approach to governing. To refocus our national debate on the need for good schools, hospitals, childcare, jobs, a strong economy, and a good quality of life, as opposed to immigration, immigration, immigration, we need those who believe deeply that what matters, truly, is what works. Faced with a choice of either an explicitly hard left Labour party and an increasingly hard right Conservative party, the need for unapologetically moderate leaders who proudly plant a flag in the centre-ground and refuse to be moved has never been greater.

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Nora Mulready tweets @NoraMulready

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Photo: Dom Stocqueler