Adam Trimingham column: As an optimist, I say the EU result is a disaster

Maybe it’s because I live in the People’s Republic of Brighton and Hove that I found nearly all my friends and relations strongly, even passionately, favouring the Remain side.

The city by the sea has a broad, tolerant tradition of welcoming links with Europe and celebrating what we can do together.

Most people I know realised there was widespread concern over immigration and the cost of bureaucracy in Brussels. But all those I asked last week to forecast the result thought it would be narrowly in favour of Remain.

It would be easy to condemn those who voted Leave as a bunch of bigots - Little Englanders rather than Europeans. But there were more than 17 million of them and they were not all like that.

There is a much better case for suggesting that many of them did not know what they were doing. One survey says seven per cent who voted Leave now regret their decision.

Some people treated the referendum as casually as if they were voting for the best jivers in Strictly Come Dancing or the brightest hound in Britain’s Got Talent. Now they know it was a lot more serious than that.

In the era of social media and the internet, it’s easy to drum up support for the dodgiest of causes. It’s truer than ever that a lie can be half way round the world before the truth has got its boots on.

Many voters must have been seduced by the unlikely claim by the anti EU campaign that Britain’s departure would somehow free up £350 million a week to lavish on the National Health Service.

Many fell for the belief that shutting the door on Europe would magically stop mass migration when plainly it will not.

They failed to heed repeated warnings from all kinds of experts that leaving Europe will be dire for the economy.

Those who hoped to give the Establishment a bloody nose will soon find that they had landed up far more battered themselves.

Now they have won, it is easy to see how bereft the Leave campaign is of talent. It has the untrustworthy and unedifying Boris Johnson who shafted his friend, David Cameron, in his naked bid for power, the distinctly odd Michael Gove, and Iain Duncan Smith, the so-called Quiet Man who now cannot shut up.

Lurking and smirking in the background is the unpleasant Nigel Farage whose views on immigration stop just short of racism.

It’s plain that his unprepossessing group had no idea of what do in the unlikely event of victory and we will soon all be paying the price for that.

A ridiculous petition on the internet this week signed by more than three million people called for another referendum to be held under new rules.

But we cannot ignore the result of a referendum even if many of us do not like it. There was a narrow but decisive win for Leave and there is no suggestion that the ballot was in any way rigged.

But it may help convince MPs that a referendum is too blunt an instrument to make complicated decisions. We elect them every five years to make those decisions for us.

The referendum has cost the career of David Cameron who was far and away the best leader Tories have had. Now they have to choose between the unpredictable Johnson and other contenders who will almost certainly have voted for Remain.

As for Labour, the referendum showed all too clearly that Jeremy Corbyn was unfit to be its leader and that letting the party membership choose him was a huge mistake.

Sime of my friends believe the referendum result will be catastrophic for Britain. As an optimist I can only reduce that to a disaster. I hope we will learn lessons form it but fear we will not.

As the miserable month of June squelches to a close, it is tempting to match the storms and clouds to the political gloom.

But there are many more bright periods in even the dampest summer. There has been plenty of sunshine between the showers

The grass, which looks brown by this time of year in a scorching summer, is luscious green. Some flowers such as tulips and roses have had a great year.

There is no hosepipe ban, or even the possibility of one, and the streets have been washed clean instead of being smelly and dusty.

The towering clouds have looked spectacular on stormy days and there have been several magnificent sunsets. The constant clearing of the air has afforded great long views from the Downs.

And we still have the two hottest months of the year, July and August to come. Heatwaves may be unlikely but even the most capricious weather will produce a score or more of fine sunny days.