The opening number in Tim Minchin’s brilliant adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Matilda features one of my favourite lines from the musical repertoire. It is sung by a teacher bemoaning parents’ insistence that their offspring are more gifted than their peers, when it is not statistically possible for all to be so endowed. “Specialness is de rigueur / Above average is average, go figueur! / Is it some modern miracle of calculus / That such frequent miracles don’t render each one unmiraculous?”

The thought that our children are extraordinary is the most ordinary aspect of parenthood. Likewise, lovers in the first throes of infatuation imagine that no one can appreciate the particular nature of their bond, and in that respect their attachment is generic. These sentiments belong to the paradoxical set of things that are alike in the conviction that they are unique.

Religions belong to this set. They are organised around exclusive paths to truth and virtue. Even when they preach tolerance of other faiths, they imply that the tolerated alternative is still, in the final analysis, wrong. And so it is with nationalism. Of course every nation has its special character. But political projects that want to codify and police those qualities – national specialness de rigueur – fit one template. Exceptionalism is the common denominator.

Nationalism posits a mythic golden age, before the fall into corruption. It identifies some alien element – a foreign power, internal parasite or both – that caused the decline. It promises a liberation that will unleash the repressed strength of a heroic people and restore greatness. It is nostalgic and utopian. A rose-tinted lens is applied to the past for projection into the future.

The conformity of Brexit to that pattern is unmistakable: the people suffering under a Brussels yoke, their enterprising spirit stifled, their traditions diluted and their values compromised by the immigrant hordes that Europe sends; a folk memory of prelapsarian innocence before Ted Heath’s treason and forced metric conversion. Liberal leavers who deny the link are kidding themselves or dissembling. They are either being taken for a ride by the nationalists or have cynically hitched a lift.

Just as nationalism’s rhetoric is universal, so is its evolution predictable. The romanticised past it would restore is, of course, unavailable, so it fails to deliver on its promises. Someone must then be blamed. The two commonest candidates are hostile states and a fifth column at home.

2017 will be a bumper year for shaming ‘enemies of the people' and demanding conspicuous displays of patriotism

It is currently uncontroversial to observe that the concerns of other European countries in the Brexit process are legitimate. Even Brexiteers sometimes try to inhabit a foreign perspective, arguing that the trading interests of other nations will lubricate a felicitous deal. (They think, mistakenly, that German car exporters will persuade Angela Merkel that tariff-free access to British consumers is her number one priority.) But that empathic licence will be revoked when the negotiations turn sticky. Once it becomes clear that the rest of the EU wasn’t bluffing about departing members of the club losing the privileges of membership, the Brexiters’ mood, already sour despite their referendum victory, will curdle. The haranguing of high court judges for daring to interpret the law as it applies to parliament’s role in triggering article 50 of the Lisbon treaty was a throat-clearing prelude. Next year will be a bumper year for probing divided loyalties, impugning motives, shaming “enemies of the people” and demanding conspicuous displays of patriotism. The Brexit catchphrase will be the old inquisitorial challenge: “Whose side are you on?”

Nationalists do not have a monopoly on patriotism, but they always claim one. The distinction is important. Patriotism is an emotional attachment to one’s country, expressed as pride in belonging to a discrete cultural community.It can be justified or irrational; gentle or aggressive; nuanced or crude; passionate or fond. It doesn’t need official signoff. The state can amplify patriotism but it cannot police it without a repressive accent. Government cannot insert its chosen version of patriotism in the heart of someone who doesn’t feel it that way. Nationalism is when politicians try to do just that, and lash out when they fail. To be moved on hearing “I vow to thee, my country” is patriotic. To make public servants vow to their country on threat of being moved out of a job is nationalism.

The strongest surge of patriotic feeling I had in 2016 was in response to the death of Victoria Wood. Her ear for the inflections of the language, exploring contours of class and regional identity, and her gift for communicating that insight with self-deprecating humour were quintessentially British. She made me feel lucky to be British, so I could be in on the joke. But I can’t see The Ballad of Barry and Freda being played to fire up a political rally – serried ranks of po-faced activists singing in unison: “To quote Milton, to eat stilton, to roll with gay abandon on the tufted Wilton / let’s do it, let’s do it tonight!”

I don’t deny that Euroscepticism has deep roots. It resonates with a sense of historical and geographical detachment from the continent. Nor do I claim that everyone who voted leave is a nationalist. But the politics of Brexit are locked into that trajectory. The saddest part is that rupture from the EU is a dismal national mission statement, a nightmare odyssey of diplomatic haggling for the prize of having one day to rebuild relations that were damaged along the way. The sweetest moment for Brexiters was the morning of 24 June 2016, when the two fingers of anti-establishment, anti-Brussels anger were raised. Point made. Everything that follows is compromise. What nation does Brexit even galvanise? A majority of Scots voted remain (a fact that Scottish nationalists have been quick to weave into their customised narratives of oppression by the English).

Brexit is as dull and soulless as the EU institutions it opposes. As a referendum campaign it struck a chord. As a process it is without music or poetry or any of the cultural depth on which nation-building depends. As a vehicle for the assertion of British exceptionalism it is exceptionally joyless: the creation of uncreative politicians who have nothing special to offer but belief in their own specialness. The more their mediocrity is exposed, the harder they will try to bolster their cause with appeals to patriotic duty.

But there is also a patriotism of nonconformity that cannot be bullied into allegiance. It is not the flag-waving, oath-swearing kind of patriotism, but it is no less indigenous to these islands. Its anthems might not be rousing, but they are more fun. How do we assert this gentler version of British greatness? Victoria Wood had a sense of it. “Not bleakly, not meekly, beat me on the bottom with the Woman’s Weekly. So let’s do it. Let’s do it tonight.”

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