[user104658]

I do think if anything the referendum has shown that after years of negativity, there's a real appetite right now for being offered a little bit of hope in politics. People want to believe in the possibility of a better, fairer world and that's what they want to hear - that we can achieve that and then be in a good place to tackle the problems like the deficit and debt.

I know it's a bit simplistic but you can scale it down to a personal level: until recently me and my wife combined had a decent chunk of debt and even a deficit, juggling credit and dipping into credit cards at the end of the month. It had been a haunting us for years, since the end of university, and was a major source of stress for me (I'm a money worrier). But then, I decided to actually do something about it - stop pinching pennies so hard, get myself into a good place, then tackle it head on. We were debt free in less than a year.

Like I say, overly simplistic maybe, but it does apply. We simply cannot tackle the deficit by making everyone so miserable that productivity plummets. It'll only make things far worse. Yes you can keep chipping away at the outgoings but eventually you'll start harming the bottom line of money coming in too, and it'll all be for nothing.

People need that. People need a functional, hopeful country to have any sort of motivation to want to keep it that way. We're crying out for it.