ABOVE almost anything else a newspaper column should not be B-O-R-I-N-G. Readers can quit at any point. Are you still with me? This is a risky strategy.

Unhelpfully, the need to avoid being B-O-R-I-N-G has virtually placed off limits the most important issue that has faced Britain for generations – Brexit.

It’s true that some newspaper readers themselves are prepared endlessly to slog out the Brexit battle in the columns reserved for their views. They favour long exchanges, and some react with bile if an editorial hand has attempted to do them a favour by making their messages more concise and readable. But no-one except these letter-writing adversaries reads their often impenetrable missives anyway.

Meanwhile, however, an urgent need has arisen to get back to the Brexit basics.

In the referendum’s turnout of almost threequarters of the electorate – the largest ever for a national vote – what did the majority of Britons aim for when they chose Brexit?

“Take back control” is the phrase most often trotted out. It’s a bit pedestrian – hardly the stuff to swell the breast with pride. Yet that’s what’s needed now: a word, or phrase, to rekindle the spirit which defied the heaviest odds, stacked up by the Government, the Bank of England, the CBI and even Sir Richard Branson, to produce the Brexit vote.

So might we say that “taking back control” means becoming a sovereign nation again? Yes we might. But “sovereign” doesn’t seem quite the word for these egalitarian times. Slightly antique, it hints at a ruling monarchy. But the will of the 52 per cent who voted for Brexit is currently being eroded before our eyes. Maybe the word to revive it is “independence”. Most of us, surely, would rally to a banner proclaiming Independent Britain?

But there’s an even better choice. For the essence of Brexit is self-government. Brexit’s glorious mission is to restore Britain as a self-governing nation. No different to Australia, Canada, the USA, or (pinched from Pointless) the Central African Republic or Tuvalu. Following the Brexit vote, the united authority of Parliament – Lords, Commons, all the major parties – should have been devoted to delivering Brexit to the British people swiftly and on the best possible terms. Instead we are being subject to the biggest act of betrayal since we wrenched the vote from our political masters.

I’ve often quoted here from G. K. Chesterton’s marvellous poem The Secret People – “we are the people of England and we have not spoken yet”. I’ve never thought it quite appropriate to quote the lines: “It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first, / Our wrath come after Russia’s wrath and our wrath be the worst.” But that’s how I feel now. Never mind the undemocratic EU. Our own political elite is treating us with total contempt.

A BELATED glanced back at the Tour de Yorkshire. It was another triumph for Welcome to Yorkshire – stylish re-incarnation of the clumpily-named Yorkshire & Humberside Tourist Board. Contemplating its success – the money instantly generated, with more to come through the global publicity – it seems strange that no voice north of the Tees is raised questioning the wisdom of scrapping the Northumbria Tourist Board. The North-East needs that specialist help more than Yorkshire.