The Real Meaning of the Brexit Debate

How did they get to be like this? The English think of themselves as a tolerant, imperturbable people, given to self-deprecation and understatement. To outsiders, they can appear chilly and stuck-up. Now, almost overnight, they (or we, to cast off my thin disguise) seem to have become a bunch of hysterical, self-pitying paranoiacs. Brexit has knocked us off our trolleys, depriving at least half the nation of any sense of proportion.