There’s a reason to be optimistic about Britain. The nation is completing a seven-year therapy treatment that worked. True, it’s been an expensive exercise in wrecking relationships. But at last, the UK knows what it is: a small country that needs immigrants, high taxes and European allies. Perhaps 60 per cent of Britons now share this view — not a consensus, but a majority.
The UK entered therapy afflicted by delusions. A paper by Louise Isham, an Oxford psychology professor, and others defines these as “unfounded beliefs that one has special powers, wealth, mission, or identity”. These “delusions of exceptionality” are “arguably the most neglected psychotic experience in research,” they write. Examples of delusions are “believing one is invincible and stepping into traffic, or believing one is Jesus and will therefore be crucified”. The Brexiter version was believing that one is a global power that should “go it alone”.
The Brexiter economist Andrew Lilico expressed this notion poignantly. Britain, he tweeted in 2019, was “different” from other countries. “When I looked out of the window — in Chester, or Oxford, or London or wherever — there was . . . something there. It mattered.” British history, he continued, “mattered. It brought us here.” “Politics mattered. If we screwed up, we could cost history & the future of the world something precious, that destiny or God had gifted to us.” But, Lilico concluded: “This afternoon . . . I saw things differently — as I suppose Remainers or certain lefties must see things all the time. I just saw my car. Some trees. Radlett . . . The place I saw didn’t disappoint me or the world or God or history, because nothing was expected of it. It wasn’t special.”