Now we’ve voted for Brexit, great British businesses like Southern rail, Byron burger, Lloyds bank and Sports Direct are finally set free

It’s only a few weeks since the vote to leave Europe, but already we can see the potential for Britain, now we can finally give our country back to British companies run by British business leaders we can trust, such as Philip Green and Mike Ashley of Sports Direct.

At last we can flourish by encouraging reliable British firms, such as Southern Rail, no longer held back by stifling EU regulations such as the one that insists train companies must occasionally run the odd train.

Under the miserable red tape that ruins business, Southern Rail might have had the rail network taken off them, for the technicality of being officially the most unreliable rail service in Britain. But look how they bring people together. At Brighton station, crowds of people larger than you’d find at any carnival in Brazil, surge into the surrounding streets chanting, “Not again, every poxy arsehole bastard day they’re all bastard cancelled, aaaaargh”, creating a delightful harmony that drifts across the sea.

Sometimes they playfully tease their customers by getting them up to London, then bringing them half way back before conking out, giving thousands of people the unexpected joy of discovering the flora and fauna of the car park at Haywards Heath, where you wait for a replacement bus.

If you’re really lucky you’re left there so long that the locals organise a refugee camp, and June Whitfield narrates an appeal for you to be broadcast before the news, while Palestinians and Somalians hold fund-raising concerts and send you tins of buttered beans and blankets.

Southern Rail should be praised for running a fascinating human experiment, as they cause solicitors and suburban software to spend their evenings training on the South Downs to be a guerrilla soldier in the Army of Mighty Vengeance for the Caliphate of Renationalised Railways Across Sussex and Kent. The company has also made a contribution to the world of philosophy, because so many of their services never arrive on any day that millions of people engage in lengthy discussions about whether the service therefore actually exists.

Recently Southern permanently cancelled 15 per cent of their services, which they announced with a notice at stations that goes: “The new revised timetable is to improve network efficiency.” This message has been criticised, but in its defence, as it’s exactly 17 syllables it won the 2016 Absurd Haiku of the Year Award and has been learned and studied by every schoolchild in Japan.

It would be unfair to ignore the government’s role in Southern Rail’s success, because the contract was awarded to them partly because they promised to scrap guards and close ticket offices. The company, which as we’ve seen has a playful way with words, assures us the staff will be replaced with “station hosts”.

This is marvellous. Every morning someone will walk along the platform saying, “Ah Mr Wilson who always gets the 7.37, let me take your coat. Would you care for a sausage on a stick or a mini scotch egg? You might as well as there are no trains before 9.24. Let me introduce you to Mrs Appleton

With their joyful language, they will soon comfort passengers by announcing, “We apologise for the lack of anything train-related on our network, but we do offer a full imaginary service, in which customers are entitled to dream of a train, as long as it travels on the Southern Rail network and you don’t imagine it crossing onto other routes, in which case you’ll need a dreamed train travel card for £9.40, or £38.60 during peak hours.”

The whole rail system has become just as creative. A survey published this week revealed that rail companies, in 33 cases out of 50, offer passengers a ticket more expensive than the cheapest one available. The spokesperson for the rail “customer experience”, Jacqueline Starr, explained the unnecessarily higher fares were offered due to “market demand”. This means passengers are insisting they pay more for the same journey, complaining at ticket offices, “I want to pay more than £37 return to Norwich. I insist you whack on another £40.”

The normal answer to the complaint about fare prices is “if the customer searches, there are better value fares”. Maybe everything should be costed this way. For example, it would be so much fairer if a Kit-Kat cost £5.85, although you could get one for 45p if you went online and booked one two months in advance for a morning when you expect you might feel a bit peckish.

Because the marvellous thing about privatisation is it introduces choice, so if customers trying to get from East Grinstead to London aren’t happy with their rail service, they can choose to use a different rail network, such as the one from Glasgow to Fort William, or the Trans-Siberian Express.

This is the attitude that can drive British business now it no longer has to bow before the bureaucracy of Brussels. So Lloyds Bank has celebrated six month profits of £2.5bn by shutting 200 branches and sacking 3,000 staff. This is certain to improve efficiency, and they should ask Jacqueline Starr to explain this is in response to market demand, as so many customers enjoy the customer experience of arriving at their local branch to discover it’s been shut down.

Meanwhile, the good management of Byron, the burger restaurant, in a summery gesture to its staff reportedly invited dozens of them to a “health and safety meeting” where they were met by Government officials who told them their papers weren’t in order and they may now be deported. This is the sort of party game that can make serving burgers fun.

Maybe at Christmas, Byron will give its staff a cake – and then Donald Trump will burst out of it, put them in a horse box, and drive them off to Afghanistan.

And Mike Ashley, of Sports Direct, has been found by a parliamentary inquiry to be running a company like a “Victorian workhouse”.

Most people assumed that was a criticism, but more likely is it means he’ll be made Secretary of State for Industry by Saturday – and that’s because the common person has got their country back.