Brexit isn't the end, but of what exactly is it the beginning?

At the end of last week, the UK left the European Union after forty-seven years of mostly semi-detached membership. Despite the best efforts of the media to spin it as an 'event' the whole thing turned out to be a bit of a damp squib.

Leavers gathered outside Parliament and cheered the recorded chimes of Big Ben, a crowd funding campaign to have the real thing fired up for the occasion having raised little more than pocket change. In Glasgow Remain supporters clutched EU flags and tried to look suitably downcast for the cameras.

The great British public for the most part ignored both groups and instead stayed home to watch the football or wash their hair. Perhaps that's how it should be, history is as much about small things as major events.

Something important did happen on Friday night, just how important we don't get know; but it is likely to change everything.

Looking back with the perfect vision provided by hindsight it is remarkable that we thought joining the EU was ever going to work. During the referendum I backed the Remain campaign and still believe that being part of Europe is the most logical thing for the UK to do in a globalized world.

The thing is though people seldom do the logical thing, the stories we tell about who we are as a nation tend to get in the way. Britain, we assure ourselves, is a big country and could never fit into the straitjacket of EU membership, even though other countries manage to do so without losing their identity.

For the best part of half a century we had a sort of half out, half in relationship with Europe. On one hand following every rule handed down by Brussels as if it were holy writ and on the other dragging our feet like a stroppy teenager on a family walk. No wonder the EU didn't know what to do with the 'English Patient', apart from many put screens around our bed and hope we didn't disturb everyone else in the ward.

Now we are where we wanted to be, looking in from the outside, but do we have any idea what we are going to do with our new freedom? Beyond windy rhetoric and naive expectations have don't think we do.

Brexit was a Union Flag planted in the already existing fissure in our society. Voters in places like my hometown of Stoke-on-Trent voted overwhelmingly for it because they felt angry and ignored. Three years later they voted Tory because they were still being ignored and felt even angrier.

Leaving Europe won't solve any of their problems, in fact it could make most of them worse. There are two things the government could do next, one of which is difficult but will be beneficial in the long term, the other is simple and possibly deadly.

The hard choice is for Brexit to be the starting point for our journey to becoming an outward looking, fair and modern country. This will be a difficult and unsettling process that will require all concerned to give ground, it is not something that will be completed in a single political cycle.

The easy option is to sink into a comforting fantasy where 'plucky little Britain' stands alone against the rest of the world. All the tired tropes from the beating of Drake's drum to Spitfires soaring over the white cliffs of Dover will be rolled out like floats in a theme park parade.

Take the hard option and we could with time and effort we could have a more peaceful and prosperous future; take the easy one and all we’ve got to look forward to is populism and decline.

I'd like to hope we are big and bold enough as a nation to take the hard option because we know it is the right thing to do. The trouble is the decision is in the hands of a prime minister who is a populist to the ends of his artfully dishevelled hair.

Waking on the first morning in this new world I felt and still feel like the narrator in Philip Larkin's poem ‘Homage to a Government’, seeing the statues standing in the tree muffled squares and looking the same as ever; but knowing that everything has changed. I hope we can leave our children more than just blue passports.