SINCE today’s papers tell me that the principal cause of Brexit was Europe’s austerity and we don’t know what the final outcome will be when the dust settles, here’s my suggestion of a way out of the mess.

I can’t personally rely on any new Tory leader to provide one given the way their current leader has riven us via a six-year campaign of austerity and then divided us from both one another and Europe, before handing in his notice.

A knighthood awaits.

The OECD estimated in 2007 that between $5 and $7 trillion was lodged in tax havens many of which are part of the UK.

Let’s say that at today’s exchange rate of about $1.3 to the £ and a modest increase of 30 per cent, it’s now equivalent to £6 trillion.

Capitalism is great when it’s allowed to perform its proper function; making profits, re-investing some of those into people, industry and infrastructure.

Tax avoidance has almost wrecked the process and created new currencies by converting the tax meant for state investment into property, jewellery, yachts, islands, ‘slept in beds’, real art, handbags and jewellery worth their weight in gold.

This type of spending adds neither to employment nor universal well-being.

Instead, it has created a bubble of wealth which has divided the ultra-rich and many of the politicians who aid and abet them, from the reality of life outside the ‘bubble’. We often look into it enviously with misguided admiration for the inmates’ audacity.

Only by recycling a fair proportion of profits (normally 40-50 per cent of GDP) can realistic societies be maintained indefinitely. Capitalism is failing us now because it’s purpose is heavily corrupted by greed. Is it ‘catch-up time’?

Just imagine how an injection of a mere eight hundred billion pounds plus an on-going percentage of previously hidden profits could transform Europe. We are already united in economic sanctions against Russia. With other plausible sanctions against the enemies of fairness and cooperation, surely we can heal more wounds?

Mike Joslin

Garfield Avenue,

Dorchester