Brexit has made our politicians appear about as adept at rational long-term planning as the “rage-infected” zombies in Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, but it’s not all their fault.

The truth is that it hasn’t really ever been our forte. The “revoke and reflect” faction in parliament acknowledges this: let’s pretend Article 50 never happened; there’s no shame in kicking the can down the road.

This always made sense on Brexit. Why fling ourselves headlong at a needlessly tight schedule? Why drag frantic short-term thinking into a decision which will set the course for our grandkids’ future?

When it comes to the big, era-defining issues – whether climate change, pensions, infrastructure or our relationship with Europe – Britain has always struggled to get it right.

Our political structure can take much of the blame. A first-past-the-post electoral system equates marginal preference with absolute victory and we delight (sometimes) in an adversarial parliament more used to red-faced punctiliousness than decisive collaboration. Our media takes those cues, and tends towards the antagonistic.

Britain Before Brexit: Greater London Show all 16 1 /16 Britain Before Brexit: Greater London Britain Before Brexit: Greater London West Croydon A police van’s speed and siren bring people to shop windows, keen to watch the drama of the public space, curious to know if a crime has been committed and lining up like townsfolk in a western movie Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Greater London Trafalgar Square Morning light illuminates a typical scene outside the National Gallery. Everyone interacts with a phone, held in hands and gazed at, or held in the hands of others and posed for. The figure in the background is on another level, an exception, an anomaly Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Greater London East Croydon A dispute about shoplifting outside a store’s entrance, conducted in French, revolving around a gold watch Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Greater London Bank The Chinese flag hangs over the centre of British finance, its red blush bringing luck to the morning. St Paul’s Cathedral occupies the blue distance Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Greater London Bond Street Three pairs of legs and feet in different states, playing different roles in the heart of British commerce: one clothed, striding purposefully; another of white plastic, made to model and convince; the last barefoot, not standing Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Greater London Upton Park Plastic bags dress naked trees, only partially, flaying in the wind, torn and damp, leaving most of the branches exposed, like black cracks spreading across thin ice, across the tower block of civilisation Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Greater London Westminster A pro-Brexit protester walks past the Houses of Parliament and the anti-Brexit protesters camped opposite. Both have appropriated the Union Jack, claim to be acting in the national interest and to be patriotic. Caught in between are child and mother, who photographs the ‘home of democracy’, or herself Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Greater London Islington A new tube map is put up outside the station, hands reaching high, stretching upwards, as if in worship of the security camera, in awe of surveillance itself, one of London’s most valued currencies Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Greater London Tooting Broadway A huge bingo hall hidden away from the high street, populated sparsely by a few players. There’s so much concentration and focus. I can’t decide if they’re there to play, to win, to hide, to escape, or to kill time Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Greater London The Mall Horses are tourist attractions in certain parts of London, especially when they’re dressed in military regal attire and carrying a soldier or a guard. Tourists pose alongside them for selfies and generic holiday snaps, which when taken daily in their millions, re-enforce a global image of London as a hub of ceremonial pomp and ritual Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Greater London Tooting Bec An anonymous critique of an advert’s imagery, wheeling out the age-old distinction between lust and love, sex and companionship, surface and interior, shallowness and depth, superficial and real Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Greater London Wandsworth A declaration of the existence of community is damaged and broken. A sign portraying strength and solidarity looks weak and sad and lonely when it begins to crumble and fall apart Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Greater London Buckingham Palace I watch a lineup of paparazzi photographers outside the palace. They wait to pounce upon blacked out windows concealing guests to the Queen’s Christmas lunch. They appear bored and unenthusiastic, as if photography were for them but a chore that flashes light on celebrity faces Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Greater London St Paul’s The city is reflected by its values: a relentless list of imperative commands to become something else, some better version, upgraded; a message that says we need to acquire to improve; a hard-hitting reminder of your inadequacy and incompleteness Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Greater London Colliers Wood A laundrette on the peripheries, zone 3, where a man sits below another London – Piccadilly Circus – with its giddy movements and interactions, its colours and vibrancy, where life is shaken up and spun, as if in one of the washing machines below, rotating and loud, everything inside blurred Richard Morgan/The Independent Britain Before Brexit: Greater London Uxbridge A building site concealed with an image of what will be. A common way to cover up the messy process of (de)construction. The housing development claims to be affecting time and space, moving people into new places and better futures, fundamentally altering their existence Richard Morgan/The Independent

There are occasional calls for a cross-party commission, on the NHS or legal aid perhaps, something to “take the politics out” of deeply complex issues. But few politicians are willing to trade away their traditional bulwarks of electoral support.

Tim Marshall, an emeritus professor at Oxford Brookes University, has spent years looking at how Britain manages its long-term infrastructure projects. He reckons a system of proportional representation, or at least a political class well used to coalition, would make a better fist of things.

He flags up Germany’s decision to give up on nuclear power and focus on renewables as a sound example of government for the generations to come. Here was energy policy achieved through a mutual understanding that a long-term strategy was required.

Caroline Lucas, the Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion, makes a similar point. “There have been moments of long-term thinking on climate change,” she told me. “But our political system has allowed much of that progress to be reversed all too easily, and separates interconnected areas into silos.

“This systematic undermining of our ability to avoid climate catastrophe is borne out of both short-termism and a failure of joined-up thinking.”

It has maybe gone better In the Netherlands, where there is a fundamental threat of flooding caused by global warming. The solution there has been a multi-decade plan, backed by a major, agreed spending commitment.

And perhaps the clearest uncomfortable comparison comes in Norway. While Britain tiddled its North Sea oil money up the wall handing out tax breaks and inflating the housing market to make life miserable for our kids, Norway set it aside to build a giant pension scheme. It is now worth $1tn or thereabouts and has helped to define Norway’s place in Europe: powerful but separate; involved but independent. Precisely where some would like the UK to be.

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France likes national debates to look at big issues. Emmanuel Macron wants one to address the gilets jaunes protests, but they have a sketchy track record. There were perhaps successes on the environment, but Nicolas Sarkozy’s debate on national identity has been blamed for rallying far-right support. The worry for Britain is that, right now, any national conversation would end up in a drizzly pub car park at closing time.

It’s not all gloom. Some long-term thinking does get done. Marshall has been encouraged by the creation of a National Infrastructure Commission in the Treasury. It has a sizeable team which will use bona fide research to give measured, long-term advice. Decisions will still fall to whoever is chancellor, but it is at least a powerful voice of reason working with a relatively apolitical view to the horizon. Is it a blueprint for a way past our adversarial instincts?

What that amounts to, of course, is handing over more of the hard graft of policy making to the unelected. If you’re one of those shouty Brexit supporters with a passion for hi-viz tabards you’d probably call it the “deep state” and mutter darkly about Sandy Hook.