Brexiteers who say we need some collective hardship insult those who lived through the hell of world war two As 2018 limps to a close, senior government ministers are back on parade to remind us how glorious Brexit is going to be – lest, in the gluttonous stupor of Christmas, we had allowed ourselves to forget what marvels lie ahead. In the Sunday Telegraph, Gavin Williamson, the defence secretary, declared that Britain, far from retreating into indigent introspection, will become a “ true global player ” after 29 March 2019, with military bases all over the world. In the Mail on Sunday, meanwhile, Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, invoked the economic success of Singapore since independence in 1965 as a blueprint “for us as we make our post-Brexit future”. Like Williamson, Hunt suggests that the rest of the world is on tenterhooks, longing for Britain to assume a bullish new role once liberated from the tyranny of Brussels: “We may no longer be a superpower but we are still very