“The only thing we need to fear is fear itself”. (Franklin D. Roosevelt)

Last night in the Daily Telegraph, the consistently wrong Jeremy Warner – warner by name and nature – said we should be careful ‘not to jump the gun when it comes to leaving the EU’.  That must rank as one of the most inept analogies in journalistic history.

For one thing, we are not at the start of any race here: Britain was disqualified years ago following a mixture of Franco-German financial envy and Westminster dithering. The race is nearly over. Only Germany has a gun, and it looks likely to shoot itself before anyone crosses the finishing line.

But even were this not the case, getting out of the blocks early is no bad thing. Under Mr Warner’s system of logic, somebody jumping ship from the Titanic at Southampton would be judged an idiot. What Britain is doing in relation to the EU now, it seems to me, is coming up on deck in only a pair of underpants, watching the iceberg crunch along the rail, and then asking the captain to think again about the course he’s plotted.

But Jeremy Warner is far from alone in the British business media. Today in the FT, for example, columnist Philip Stevens spends nine paragraphs dismantling the tentative Presidency of Barack Obama on just about every level, but then concludes: ‘The case for the president is that he has navigated the storms with careful intelligence…..timidity is not a mortal sin. The slumdog President has earned a second term.’

Huh?

What is the fear of resigning from the EU about? We wouldn’t ‘lose’ EU trade if we sold stuff people want. China isn’t in the EU, nor are Korea or Japan. The Asian potential for a bright country like ours selling high-margin classics to the new rich is inestimably bigger than anything the European Union could offer, with very few of the costs.

We are too frightened to fire Cameron, who is frightened of the banks, which are too frightened to lend money. The very mention of ditching the Camerlot Clique and doing a UKip deal gives the average Tory backbencher an attack of the vapours. A single banker threatens to leave Britain, and sales of Xanax treble overnight.

Our governmental and political elite, our media, our policemen, our teachers, and our commercial stars are all scared most of the time. We call these people ‘opinion leaders’, but there is no leadership at all. We are Become Greatly Worried Britain, the land flowing with Health & Safety. And our biggest fear of all is grasping the nettle of economic and constitutional reform.

Until something changes – and dramatically – there is no escape from this self-defeating anxiety.