In his novel The Stone Raft, the Portuguese writer José Saramago imagines that the Iberian peninsula breaks away physically from the rest of the European continent at the Pyrenees. The peninsula and its peoples detach from Europe and drift across the oceans, seemingly in search of a new home and contentment, which – spoiler alert – they never quite find.

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Saramago’s book is a brilliantly playful examination of several aspects of the Portuguese national mentality, not least the complex relationship with Spain. But the essence of his fantastical idea is easily transferable to Britain. As Brexit looms, it is not difficult to see the British as another disparate group of rub-along peoples caught aboard our own stone raft, beginning to drift into the dark ocean of the future.

But Brexit, if it happens, will be a reality not a fantasy. Britain will not sail the seven seas. It will remain anchored in perpetuity across the Channel from the European continent, its peoples, economies and cultures, with which we are all intertwined. It will also be bound for ever in a special relationship with Ireland that is at least as complex as that between Spain and Portugal.

If and when Brexit goes ahead – and there are many twists to come before 29 March – there would be four important things to say. Number one: our departure from the European Union is a national tragedy, but an established fact. Two: we will one day, hopefully, be back in some form or another, but that is a question for later. Three: we need to focus on the future, partly with eventual return in mind, but more immediately because if it is only 23 days until Britain withdraws, it will be only 24 days until we start negotiating our relationship with Europe. Four: we have barely thought about this.

The central question here is whether post-Brexit Britain, as a matter of strategic national policy, attempts to hug post-Brexit Europe close or not. My view is that it must and should. But we should not assume that this will be easy. And we certainly cannot assume that Britain is full of politicians and voters who want it to happen. In many cases the reverse is true. So this will require consciously new effort. Paradoxically, if we leave the EU, we will have to think and act more European than we have done as members.

Two examples this week illustrate what is at stake. One is Emmanuel Macron’s call for European Union reform, published in the Guardian and 27 other European newspapers. Macron’s letter is a frank reminder both that the European model has serious problems and that it must change. Yet it is addressed to Britain, too. Britain faces many of the same problems as the rest of Europe. Macron is right that all these require common action. So Britain, even while withdrawing from the EU, remains part of any common response.

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Equally pertinent is Theresa May’s effort on Wednesday to win Labour support for her withdrawal agreement deal by offering pledges on EU-derived workers’ rights and trade union laws. May’s offers are not as robust as they should be. They may not win the votes she wants next Tuesday, but the broad principle that underlies her effort – that of shadowing European employment and industrial law – is entirely sound. It will be central both to preventing Brexit from triggering a bonfire of regulations, and ensuring that the UK shadows good practice within the EU in order to maintain broader regulatory alignment to benefit the economy.

Britain urgently needs to grasp the scale, complexity and importance of the trade negotiations with the EU that could begin in 24 days’ time. So far this has not happened. We have agreed the withdrawal terms – or will agree if the attorney general Geoffrey Cox does his Rumpole of the Berlaymont act and secures a backstop deal he can sell to Tory and DUP MPs. But the future political and economic relationship with the EU, most of which is airbrushed in the deal’s political declaration, holds the key to the country we will all live in for the next decade and more. That negotiation hasn’t even begun.

Yet the same huge question will apply at the start of the next negotiations as at the start of the withdrawal process in March 2017. The question was not answered then, fatally. It has not gone away now. What sort of relationship do we want to have with the EU in the future?

The failure to answer this question remains bound up in Conservative party politics. May is frightened of giving the true answers – hug the EU close to ensure a Brexit that will work for as many people as possible. Instead, she has fed the belief that real divergence with the EU can now begin. Much of the Tory party is dangerously obsessed with the succession – dropping the pilot now the open sea has been reached – with Boris Johnson or some other Brexiteer taking charge of the future negotiations. This truly terrifying thought ought to concentrate minds afresh. The next phase will be much more difficult and wide-ranging than the article 50 phase. It will, almost literally, cover everything for which modern government has some responsibility, from fish to firearms to fraud. It is likely to last longer than two years. Britain’s former chief negotiator on Europe, Ivan Rogers, is fond of saying that these will be the toughest trade talks ever because they are negotiating not a convergence but a divergence. Where exactly do we want it to lead? Johnson is not the only aspiring Tory leader who has no clue about that.

Speaking at the Institute for Government in London on Monday, Rogers spelled out other daunting issues. Every department in Whitehall is going to be involved. Sister departments in the Northern Ireland, Scottish and Welsh governments have dogs in the fight, too. Coordinating all the departmental interests and arbitrating between them will be beyond the authority of the Brexit department. It will have to be led from the centre. That will impose immense disciplines on the prime minister, who will be both on-field captain and inter-departmental referee as arguments intensify. And the EU is good at trade deals. It is focused. We are not. No wonder May’s Brexit negotiator, Olly Robbins, is said to be leaving soon.

Again the shocking prospect of a Johnson premiership rears its head. In some ways this could add up to a case for May staying. Yet Westminster thinks she is dead in the water. Even if she did cling on, there is nothing to suggest that the same mistaken priorities that were adopted in 2017-19 will not be repeated in the period starting in 2019, and at far greater risk and costs. But the risks and costs only underscore the seriousness of the stage we are about to reach, whatever the outcome of next week’s votes.

• Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist