Mal Fletcher considers the UK's future in light of Brexit.

The EU has had its fair share of successes - most notably in promoting internal travel, dialogue, trade, security and above all peace. These should not be underappreciated - especially the last.

Most recently it has, however, shown arrogance in its handling of the migration question and its attempts to solve common problems through elitist back-channel tactics. Angela Merkel's negotiations with Turkey, for example, were well intentioned, but they were perceived by some people in the EU as unrepresentative and unsupportable.

This perceived arrogance made it hard for friends of the EU to make a case in its defence during the UK's referendum.

Boris Johnson, a biographer of Churchill after all, claims that the institution was fit for purpose when it was conceived. It is now, he says, no longer doing the right job for Britain.

Now that the UK has made its choice, its leaders must wind back any notions of elitism in their ranks. Inclusion must begin within the political classes themselves.

It would be helpful if the next Prime Minister were to call together a "government of all the talents". Not in the formal, cabinet sense perhaps, but as an advisory group made up of eminent thinkers and doers who are prepared to place national interest above sectional concerns or self-promotion.

If media vox pops are to be believed, the result has left more than a few Brits feeling quite insecure about their future.

This was bound to happen, whatever the outcome. After all, this was not a poll on a five-year government; it proscribed an epochal national direction. What's more, the vote was always expected to be a tight one, despite more bombastic noises from the markets and the bookies.

Arguably the success of the Leave campaign allows more room for insecurity, even among its own supporters, than a vote for the status quo might have done. The status quo is, after all, usually easier to live with than change - unless, of course, there is an external, existential threat to the nation as in a time of war.

Doubtless, the legendary British capacity for continuity will come to the fore and people will find ways to leave disagreements behind. Indeed, many leaders and supporters of the defeated side have already expressed a desire to work for the common cause going forward.

Yet divisions will remain and possibly, for a while, suspicions with them. Today, the United Kingdom is more than a little disunited, emotionally and in terms of its aspirations.

Shaping the first pages in this new chapter in Britain's history will also require leadership that focuses on strategy more than tactics, building on patiently-thought-through priorities. It will need to see over the horizon and beyond the nation's front door.

Many voices will clamour to be heard as the UK seeks to decide what kind of "independent" state it will be. I use the word independent advisedly, as no nation is truly independent in an increasingly globalised world.

Indeed, most nations of any note today - even in the developing world - are uniting in blocs of one form or another, to bolster influence and cut costs with trade.