I KNOW that the result of the Referendum was a shock to many people, just as it was welcome to others.

Yet, whether you like or dislike the outcome, it is a fundamental principle of democracy that we all have to accept the result of a free vote.

The real challenge now is for Britain to negotiate a deal with other EU countries. Make no mistake, that is not going to be easy. Unravelling forty years of treaty obligations is no small task and it is made harder by the fact that the UK does not have enough trade negotiators, the result of stringent government cuts to the civil service.

Now we have taken a decision to leave, other EU countries don’t owe us anything and anyone who thinks that this will be easy is in for a rude awakening. Those negotiations must be aimed at protecting jobs and two fundamental points need to be understood.

If we want to trade with the EU but be outside the single market, we will face tariff barriers which make it harder for exporters.

If we want to be in the single market, we will have to accept its rules, as Norway does. It’s just that we will have no say in making those rules.

There will be a rocky road ahead.

At the same time, I will want to hold the Leave campaign to account for the promises they made. Already those promises are unravelling.

Boris Johnson was severely criticised for a column in a national newspaper which many felt was backtracking on promises the Leave campaign made.

Leaked e-mails suggest that Michael Gove had approved and amended the article and signed it off as being “very, very good”. (We all know how that ‘friendship’ has ended.) Despite the Leave posters saying “Let’s give our NHS the £350m the EU takes every week”, leading Leave campaigner Iain Duncan-Smith has already backtracked on this pledge saying, remarkably, that he never said it would all go to the NHS.

Many voters tell me that that pledge swung their vote.

How will voters feel, I wonder, when they discover that the things they were promised don’t materialise?