WELL, I hope you like cucumber sandwiches. I hope you like fish and chips wrapped in greaseproof paper, and tea in china cups taken on the lawn, and strawberries and cream while watching tennis, and the tap of ball against bat and polite applause at a cricket match.

I hope you enjoy the torrential rain in the middle of summer, the gingham tablecloths and ice cream at a seaside café, the sight of grown men with their shirts off at the first sight of sunshine, their beer-loving stomachs pouring out over their shorts, gleaming like lobsters fresh out of the cooking pot.

I hope you don’t miss the Mediterranean sunshine, the baking midday heat of the sloping tideless beaches, the turquoise hue of the sea, the balmy evenings eating olive oil-drizzled food, the whitewashed houses with hat-wearing elderly men perched on painted blue wooden chairs outside, drinking neat expresso and playing backgammon.

Instead I hope you focus on this green and pleasant isle, cut off from the rest of the continent by 20 miles of sea, this nation of shopkeepers, because we are soon to be – just like in the heydays of our Empire – in splendid isolation.

Of course, we’re not about to eschew salami or pasta, or be prevented from enjoying Mediterranean holidays, but we will no longer be subjected to those annoying pan-European rules – like the Human Rights Act, or workers’ rights, or parental leave.

We’re still a way off Brexit. And hopefully under the hawkish glare of Theresa May, we’ll be able to negotiate a smooth transition. But to believe that the departure will make Britain “great again” is at best naïve.

Our economy is unrecognisable from that of even 40 years ago. Our manufacturing base is primarily high end pharmaceuticals and aerospace, our service sector overarching, finance sector the king.

We’re the fifth largest global economy, punch way above our weight internationally for such a tiny set of islands, but even before we voted to leave the EU, our economy was slowing, with construction and manufacturing starting to struggle. This month we will begin to find out whether we face Brexitaggedon. Early indications show that the economy is slowing, but it hasn’t nosedived.

It’s far too early to see the real impact. We haven’t even invoked Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon, which starts the process. Negotiations take at least two years. By the time we have Brexited we will be almost in the grip of another General Election.

All those predictions of gloom from either side during the EU debate were unfounded, for no one can know the true impact until it actually happens, and even then not for years. And we are living in an uncertain world, the shifting sands of global uncertainty being no place to make predictions.

2016 was the year the world went mad. We had terror attack upon dreadful terror attack. The Russians started feeding misinformation into the global news cycle, from Edinburgh, of all places. The Republicans elected Trump as their candidate. The Brits voted for Brexit. Hate crime is on the rise, just to add to our woes.

It puts the whole debate into perspective. I was as shocked and upset as most Remainers when I saw the result of the vote.

When we do leave the EU, we’ll have to make the best of it.

But don’t expect it to make Britain great again any more than you might expect Trump to make America great again. Building walls – real or metaphorical – between countries only causes more problems.