By Peter Preston

Brexit has drained Britain of its authority – and, it would seem, its competence. But, in the gloom, the press must remain optimistic enough to seek new ideas.

Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s old chief-of-staff, is a master builder of bleakness. “I work in 11 countries across the globe,” he announced last week, “and no one is interested in what Britain thinks, even in those parts of the world where we had a historical role.”

Donald Trump doesn’t sit by his phone waiting for Theresa May to call. “We are no longer able to build a coalition in Brussels behind our foreign policy objectives. No one wants to be seen to be working with a member state about to depart” … “We have rendered ourselves irrelevant.”

Which is a condition for editors and broadcasters to take to heart, too. For years, from the pulpit of leader writing rooms and BBC studios, we’ve been advising the world how to behave. But see how that pulpit has fallen to bits.

Our foreign secretary can’t even get one imprisoned Brit’s backstory right, let alone get her out of Iran. Our long-serving defence secretary vanishes at the stroke of a knee. President Putin takes nil notice when the PM berates his sinister social media offensive. And, as those who read European newspapers may attest, our Brexit dilemmas are a source of polite bafflement.

The UK, when it’s mentioned at all, is treated as a fading friend suffering from some kind of awful, undiagnosed sickness. (Or, according to Rafael Behr in theGuardian, the continent sees “a country fast degenerating from trusted ally to nightmare neighbour”.)

All this has a clear impact. British news, day after day, means Brexit, Brexit, Brexit. We’re absorbed by our own irresolution. Overarching questions – the reform of the UN, a defined role for Nato, the global economy – are pushed to one side. We look inwards, rather than out at a troubled world.

It’s no help, of course, that the American press seems similarly stymied, doomed day after day to shoot at the open target called Trump, so that mockery and revulsion become the polar opposites of leadership. But don’t overlook the British problem. “Our politics is in turmoil,” says Powell, “the prime minister powerless, the minority government on the verge of extinction.”

Too bleak? Perhaps. For remember: optimism, vital optimism, doesn’t just keep nations going. It conditions what their chroniclers say.

The most powerful editorial I read last week was in Le Monde, following President Macron on a whirlwind tour of France’s industrial towns and sink estates. “For two days, the head of state has spared no effort to demonstrate that his reforming ambition would cover all the territories of the republic, including the most disadvantaged.”

And Kath Viner, editor-in-chief of the Guardian, gave a notable lecture: “If people long to create a better world, then we must use our platform to nurture imagination – hopeful ideas, fresh alternatives, belief that the way things are isn’t the way things need to be. We cannot merely criticise the status quo; we must also explore the new ideas that might displace it. We must build hope.”

Well, we’ll see. But energy and belief can walk hand in hand – not just for politicians but for the media that watches over them.