As usual, Shakespeare nails it. In Julius Caesar he warns: “There are tides in the affairs of men” and that if people don’t seize the opportunity and sail out boldly, “all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and miseries.”

Is it just me who feels Britain is facing a turn of the tide? That as autumn 2017 settles in, our island is like a ship that could sail one way or another, for better or worse?

Let me explain.

Firstly, I’m sure that thousands of York citizens are watching the on-going saga of the Brexit negotiations with more than a trace of alarm.

Let’s remember that 58 per cent of the 70.7 per cent in York who voted in the referendum on June 23, 2016, wanted to remain in the European Union. I was one of those people.

But a referendum is a referendum. And in common with most Remainers, I have accepted the democratic choice that people made.

What I find impossible to accept, however, is the complete hash the government seem to be making of leaving the EU.

It is becoming quite clear that those advocating Brexit have no clear vision of what it will look like, let alone how to navigate the immense complexity of the process.

This is not an abstract question for our island nation or for York.

Last week’s negotiations revealed there has been no meaningful progress on agreeing the terms of the Brexit withdrawal. And yet we have little more than a year to establish fundamental questions of trade and millions of people’s rights.

If there are “tides in the affairs of men” we seem to be being swept into a storm no one who voted to leave the EU truly expected.

Namely, a “hard” Brexit which will force us to paddle in a world where Britannia does not rule the waves and countries are not queuing up for trade deals with us.

Take America’s decision last week to slap tariffs of 219 per cent on Bombardier, a crucial employer in Northern Ireland and manufacturer of wings for the civil aerospace industry.

At a stroke, the illusion of the much-trumpeted “special relationship” between Britain and America has been dispelled by Trump.

I would like to make a little prediction. The next thing we’ll hear from our crack team of negotiators in Brussels and triumphalist Brexiteers in the media is that everyone is being nasty and mean to us victims.

The EU are really, really horrid not to let us (to quote Boris Johnson) “have our cake and eat it”.

And the Americans aren’t playing nice at all.

How much will Brexit cost the UK? No one has a clue. And that means we cannot estimate its future economic effects on York either.

Yet there is one thing we can be quite certain about. The government’s foolish decision to use the future residency rights of the three million EU citizens in Britain as a bargaining chip is causing pointless fear, uncertainty and distress.

Likewise, the 1.5 million British citizens working and living in EU countries have been left in a painful state of limbo.

But Britain faces a turn of history’s tide in more ways than just Brexit.

As the conference season winds down we have been able to see what solutions the major parties are offering to solve our country’s many problems.

And deep problems they are. 1.2 million households were referred to food banks last year.

Likewise, years of austerity have brought the NHS and our social care system to its knees. And it is simply unacceptable that millions of young people are saddled with huge student debts, face a future of low pay and job insecurity without a pension, and have no prospect of being able to afford their own home.

Yes, the good ship Britain is sailing over deep waters right now. We need a compassionate, visionary, competent government that will ensure we don’t resemble a ship of fools.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat.