It is vital to avoid the EU referendum result leaving an appalling legacy of division in the UK

In 1981, the Labour party conference decided to leave the European Community despite the British people having voted to remain inside it six years earlier, in the 1975 referendum. At the time, I wrote a letter to the Guardian drawing attention to the desperate situation in which the centre-left found itself. Today, I raise a similar warning at a time when the country is in serious need of an effective opposition to maintain the best possible relationship with the EU.

Plenty of people have been saying that the triggering of Article 50 by the British government leads to the inevitable departure of Britain from the EU. Either a deal is reached under which Britain leaves or two years expire, after which Britain leaves anyway according to its time limt.

Tom Brake has tabled a Bill to be debated next Tuesday which would give Europeans living here the right to stay in the EU.

This follows on from both the Government and Theresa May refusing to give assurances to people who are living here that they will have an unconditional right to carry on doing so. Theresa May seems determined to use them as a bargaining chip.

Both the main parties are currently paralysed as political forces by their leadership battles. The Government is leaderless, the country at a standstill politically. This is our moment to assert our right to be heard as former and future political leaders, and force our presence on the airwaves and on social media. Moreover if the right-wing press will not accept our voice, this is surely the moment to invest in national advertising.

Timetable for BREXIT Negotiations

In charting a course towards a final settlement of Britain's position vis a vis the European Union we need to be aware of the European context within which we are a player. The following dates are important when considering how events might play out and what options may be possible.

This has been a tough week for us all. It's followed the hard work in the build-up to voting day, the exhaustion of the day itself and the dreadful night as the results saw the collapse of the political and structural certainties we have all come to understand.

Firstly I want to give a huge thanks to all those up and down the country who have worked their socks off campaigning to keep the UK in the EU. Ours was a positive, passionate and patriotic campaign. It was always going to be a tough fight, trying to reverse in a matter of weeks the anti-EU propaganda and anti-establishment mood that built up over many years. But the Lib Dems stood firm, and our thousands of activists can be proud that when the time came, they stood up for the values we hold dear and for what we believe was firmly in the national interest.

My mind keeps going to parallels between the worlds of Brexit and Trump and what happened in Germany in the 1930s.

At the time of the referendum I was at the annual conference of the International Society for Psychoanalytic Study of Organisations. A gathering of people from across the world who are used to exploring unconscious processes was a rich context in which to explore what was going on under the surface.

"Far from being Bush's passenger, Blair was his co-pilot in taking this catastrophic decision which has destabilised Iraq, provided the hotbed for Daesh and tarnished Britain's reputation around the word."

"Daesh has arisen from the complete absence of any post conflict planning by the government.

"Charles Kennedy's judgement has been vindicated in every respect. I hope those in the Labour and Conservative parties who were so forceful in their criticism of him and the Liberal Democrats at the time are equally forceful in their acknowledgements today that he was right. An absence of scrutiny by the Conservative party opened the door for Blair and the Labour Government to pursue a counter-strategic, ill-resourced campaign.

I first became aware of politics as a 15 year old in 1959. I well remember that famous Macmillan poster which went something like; "Life is better under the Conservatives. Don't let Labour ruin it" And they didn't . Nearly 80% of the electorate cast their vote then and the party of 'Super Mac', which had been in power since 1951, got just less than 50% of the votes.