Is the English Channel a roadway or a barrier? Does it allow ideas, people and goods to flow back and forth within the same civilisation? Or is it rather the moat of an island fortress, a useful defence against enemies, unwanted visitors and unfair economic competition?

It depends, doesn’t it, on your perspective. Mine is a Canadian one, even though my ancestors came from the British Isles. When Canadians look across the Atlantic they see something called Europe and by that they mean the whole lot, everything from Dublin to Dubrovnik or London to Warsaw. Many in Britain would find that idea grotesque. “We want our country back,” said those who campaigned to leave the European Union in last month’s referendum. Back from meddling by the French and Germans or the bureaucrats in Brussels; back from the Poles, Lithuanians and Romanians who have come looking for work; and back, it became increasingly clear as the campaign went on, from the larger global forces that have swept through all developed economies in recent decades, removing industrial jobs and levelling protective tariffs in the name of free trade.

The Leave campaign also managed to tap into a nostalgia for the past and a sense of British exceptionalism in a way that the Remain campaign failed to. The geological upheaval that separated the British isles from the European landmass has been used as explanation for the growth over the millennia of an “island” mentality, quite different from that of the continent. Leave campaigners stressed that the British had looked across the world’s oceans for trade and empire and had been able to build their institutions and values — Parliament, a rule of law, a respect for moderation — largely free from the dangerous winds of absolutism, intolerance and ideology that blew across Europe.