As I sit here, writing my first blog post on thethinkingmanpolitics, Andrew Marr is on the telly. His opening monologue perfectly encapsulates the situation we face in Britain at this moment, and it is this: Britain is brutally divided, and no-one is stepping up to fill the leadership vacuum that will unite us.

The statistics of this result show numerous divisions: Young vs old, poor vs rich, metropolitan vs industrial areas, Wales and England vs Scotland, Northern Ireland and London. And the aftermath on social media has been particularly brutal, with some claiming to be ‘ashamed of being British’ whilst others spout the unrepeatable racism that centres on one theme: ‘Go back to your own country’. I should explain, as someone too young to vote however preferring the Leave vote, I have felt fairly bleak over the past two days. In the bubble of the results coverage early Friday morning, I was emphatic-by the time yesterday evening came the reality of what had been legitimised by the result was sinking in. I should make it clear that I would’ve voted leave and I still stand by that, but my reasons for doing so seem so far fetched from what the majority was thinking proves that above all else, people wanted simple answers to their problems, and if those answers divided us rather than bringing us together, then so what? ‘Cos immigration is stealing our jobs like, and them foreigners need to go back to their own country’.

Interestingly however, this idea of simple rhetoric engulfed both sides in the debate. ‘If you vote to leave, economic turmoil will engulf Britain for decades to come’ came the cry. ‘We will become an isolated country and war will ravage Europe’ was another simple slogan that sometimes cropped up. Even the remain campaign’s title ‘Britain Stronger in Europe’ was telling people that leaving the EU somehow meant sticking two fingers up to the continent as a whole, and that we’d all forget that Germany, France and the rest never existed. People like simple answers to complex questions: Who had the time to sift through the CBI’s analysis of the economic issues associated with Brexit when you could trust your gut instinct and ‘feel’ European? Why bother watching a two-hour debate when the very existence of a Polish meat shop on your high street was evidence enough that foreigners were taking over our country? It has become virtually impossible to convince people with anything more than a headline or a soundbite how they should vote in any election or referendum. Of course, people do think these things through somewhat, but after a while it becomes very difficult to ignore the louder voices, which are inevitably shouting simple messages.

So, that’s all rather encouraging, isn’t it? The difficulty is knowing how to bring honesty and rationale back into political debate in this country, and actually trying to get the majority of people to listen to complex arguments will be rather difficult. What we need is to do is make the simple arguments make sense, and this is very difficult when the simple, misleading messages are emblazoned across the tabloid press each and every day. As a result, this whole situation provides an interesting insight into who really controlled the strings in this referendum: Was Boris Johnson more or less influential than the Daily Mail? Is Rupert Murdoch now more powerful than any party leader or Prime Minister? And why, after the phone hacking scandal and the exposure of the dirty side of the press are we continually subdued by their eye-catching headlines? I think it’s the job of any future Prime Minister or party leader to at the very least distance themselves from the bosses of these companies, and try to counter their claims with decent, open and honest politics.

We cannot rely on the press in this country to suddenly reform and provide entirely honest front pages, so we must rely on our politicians to do the job for them. You may think following that proclamation that I’m going to reiterate my support for Jeremy Corbyn, but actually I think now is the time not just for him to resign but to leave the party and form another where his views are more broadly agreed upon (but more on that in future). We have had a leadership crisis in this country for 25 years or more, and any new leaders of any party must start to address the issues in this country head on. People thought Tony Blair was this leader when they voted in their droves for him in 1997, but even he disappointed the nation. What we are missing is a leader who is both strong AND willing to recognise issues that we face in this country, and also in their respective parties. This lack of true leadership has created the vacuum that Nigel Farage filled, and this is the same vacuum that has allowed racism and xenophobia to become legitimised in national debate and conversation over the past few years. The big problem at the moment is that there isn’t so much a leadership vacuum as more of a black hole: The Prime Minister has resigned, the leader of the opposition will surely have to go, and the Leave camp have been suspiciously quiet over the past few days. People are dazed and confused, and what we need immediately is someone to step up and feather our brow-at the moment I don’t care who it is, as long as they are frank, honest and truthful. Britain is in turmoil, and as Westminster begins a civil war we need someone to step up, first to calm the situation, and then to lead the way through the days, weeks and months ahead.