"‘This country is a blessed nation,’ he said. ‘The British are special. The world knows it. In our innermost thoughts, we know it. This is the greatest nation on earth.’"

This, I think, is one of the better pieces about Brexit by a self-reflective Remainer.

The writer, Tom Crewe, is not immune to patriotism. My title is taken from his quotation from Blair's farewell speech. He comments: "if tears didn’t spring to my eyes, and I’m not prepared to say they didn’t, I undoubtedly brimmed with pride". Leavers sometimes need to be reminded that not all Remainers are busy robbing poor boxes in order to avoid standing for the National Anthem.

He talks about the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony. It's surprising how many times discussion of Brexit turns to this urtext of Britain at its best: carry out a Google search if you doubt me. But Crewe is able to note that it was "a minutely calculated, essentially propagandist, publicly funded spectacle". Of course it was, you might say. So what?, you might ask. But, at some level, some people seem to have regarded it as a quasi-spontaneous outburst of feeling from the Real Britain, and there is a fair degree of overlap between those people and the most upset Remainers. I'm afraid the closest thing to a spontaneous outburst of feeling from the Real Britain that we have seen recently is the Leave vote itself. (For the record, I enjoyed the 2012 ceremony.)

Crewe also notes that it is Remainers, not Leavers, who get really worked up about Britain's influence in the world. The typical Remainer worries that leaving the EU means that Britain is leaving the 'top table', or ceasing to 'punch above its weight'. The typical Leaver would be happy if he could influence his own MP to do what he voted for in 2016, and influence on the rest of the world be damned. 

Crewe also notes that Remainers are principally afflicted by embarrassment. He asks why that embarrassment strikes now when it has not affected right-thinking people earlier, for example, given the "ideological savagery of the Tory-led governments since 2010"? (Gosh: the mild centrism of a Con-LibDem alliance is now "ideological savagery": I suppose same-sex marriage is pretty extreme by historical standards, but it was pretty mainstream at the time.) 

The answer, of course, is that Remainers feel that the world is watching them - and laughing. (Leavers have enough to worry about with Remainers laughing at them before they start worrying about what foreigners think.) It is akin to that feeling of being abroad and spotting other British people, loud and vulgar and, well, just plain embarrassing. It's ok if people behave like that back home, but it's just too much to bear when they do it in front of foreigners, making us look bad by association. (Why is that? Is it because even the most sophisticated and cultured Brits are secretly convinced that they are much less sophisticated and cultured than foreigners, and that outward crudeness from a fellow Brit will expose the truth?) I am sure that if Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau and Hillary Clinton and Emmanuel Macron and everyone who has ever been in a Scandi-drama all turned round and said that they thought that Brexit was a jolly good idea and they wished they'd thought of it first then Remainers would be a lot more happy about it, despite all the underlying facts being the same.

Crewe concludes: "But it’s also possible to see the vote to Leave another way: as a moment when reality triumphed over storytelling. ... Brexit, whatever the dangers, is forcing Britain to get to know itself better. Not all countries are given that opportunity." He's right. Sometimes ignorance is bliss, but I'm hopeful that this is an opportunity that Britain will put to good use.