I wonder if May, who studied geography at Oxford University, has ever taken a stroll round London, that inward-looking city where you never hear a foreign tongue. After 43 years in what is now called the European Union, the British capital has become insufferably insular. Its cuisine lacks variety. Its financial institutions have no international heft. Its skyline speaks of stunted ambition. Its culture is provincial, its theater hidebound and its worldview small-minded.

No wonder May felt she had to take London global.

And Britain as a whole! For 43 years the country has been a member of an introverted, stifling little entity called the European Union that has just concluded a free trade deal with Canada, has dozens of multilateral and bilateral trade agreements, boasts the United States as its top trading partner, takes some 44 percent of British exports, and accounts for 22 percent of world economic output.

How could Britain possibly be global within this straitjacket?

No, it had to get out of Europe to go global (and make sure its citizens could no longer work in Europe)! The June 23 referendum, May insisted, was “the moment we chose to build a truly global Britain.”

I know this is a political moment when black equals white, no means yes, two plus two equals five, and post-truth is the phrase du jour. Still, this was a Trump-size whopper from May. She had obviously been steeped in Orwell before her oration.

The vote for Brexit was in fact the moment Britain turned its back on the world, succumbing to pettiness, anti-immigrant bigotry, lying politicians, self-delusion and vapid promises of restored glory.