If Britain’s remainers feel at home in the EU, they have a funny way of showing it. From a continental perspective, the undying love some remainers have been professing for Europe ever since the Brexit referendum is puzzling. Because for decades, politicians and commentators in Britain either ignored, misrepresented or sneered at the European project. Now the UK is on its way out, people are suddenly taking to the streets draped in EU flags.

Yet it wasn’t too long ago that many of today’s die-hard remainers used much the same denigrating tone about the EU as the Brexiteers and their tabloid cheerleaders. Take Anna Soubry, the Tory rebel remainer who has even talked about creating a new pro-European party. Back in 2011 she was telling her constituents: “I believe the EU has become a huge, overly costly, bureaucratic organisation fundamentally lacking in both democracy and accountability to the many millions of people who pay for it through their taxes and who are bound to live by its rules”.

Its tone is less extreme than Nigel Farage’s discourse, but as a public message it is not too different.

Many of those now fighting for continued membership of the single market and customs union seem unable to shed what is fundamentally a Eurosceptic perspective.

Vince Cable has launched a range of scathing attacks on Brussels over recent weeks. The Liberal Democrat leader has complained that European leaders could have avoided Brexit had they given in to David Cameron’s demands for renegotiation of Britain’s membership. He has even asked for Jean-Claude Juncker’s sacking, saying that the European commission president’s pro-integration proposals “give the European project a bad name” and “put off a lot of people in Britain”.

From a continental point of view, this sounds almost as incoherent as the Brexiteers’ rhetoric.

Juncker and his views might go down badly in the UK. But they aren’t overly controversial in continental mainstream politics.

When conservative and centre-right leaders across the EU chose Juncker as their candidate for the commission presidency they overruled the Cameron government’s opposition. EU leaders certainly aren’t going to start caring what British politicians think of him now the UK is on its way out.

The British remainers’ discourse on Europe – past and present – reminds me of continental Eurosceptics. Most of them talk about taking back power from the EU, but few openly advocate leaving it. They know it isn’t a vote winner, particularly as the Brexit disaster unfolds.

The EU faces criticism across Europe, but even in traditionally Eurosceptic states such as Denmark the discussion is fundamentally different from in Britain. Far fewer people consider exiting the EU to be a good idea. And the discussion of its pros and cons is not even remotely as detached from reality as the current debate about Britain leaving with “no deal”.

The truth is that British politicians from all sides and most of the British media have misrepresented and mocked Europe for decades. Rightwingers banged on about Brussels’ “red tape” choking British business. From the left, Brits complained about the project being a vehicle only to favour the interests of big business. In the British narrative the EU was both a Soviet-style socialist club with its rules and regulations protecting workers, and a predatory neoliberal capitalist one at the same time.

Behind closed doors British remainers spoke favourably about Europe. But apart from some notable exceptions such as Nick Clegg, few ever made an unconditionally positive case for the EU in public. Hardly anyone decisively challenged the myths and misconceptions that dominate the British debate. Hoping for short-term electoral gains, many resorted to Euromyths themselves.

Even in the run-up to the referendum, hardly any remainers convincingly spoke up for Europe. During the “renegotiation” of Britain’s “relationship with the EU”, David Cameron even threatened to promote Brexit himself should the other 27 EU member states not give in to his demands. When they didn’t his U-turn on, and campaigning for, EU membership was met with understandable ridicule – not least because he had spent his entire career vilifying and ridiculing Brussels.

Most campaigners portrayed themselves as reluctant remainers rather than convinced Europeans. At the launch of the Stronger In campaign, its chairman, Lord Rose, said: “I am not an uncritical fan of the European Union. Far from it.” In that spirit, many remainers continued to frame the EU as an obscure, hyper-bureaucratic and slightly tedious entity, and British membership as a necessary evil.

This narrative persists. When Tim Farron made the case for Europe during the Liberal Democrat autumn conference, he started by saying that “the European Union is flawed, imperfect, in need of reform”.

Maybe it is. Then again, maybe the UK isn’t perfect either. Yet opponents of Scottish independence don’t start their defences of the British Union by highlighting its flaws and imperfections.

Remainers blame the leave campaign and its xenophobic incitement, audacious lies and false promises for the Brexit vote. But their indignation masks an inconvenient truth.

The Brexiteers’ lies and promises fell on fertile ground. Leave won because people who want to remain let Eurosceptic ideas, many of them completely detached from reality, flourish for decades, and frequently contributed to them.

After her Florence speech, they attacked Theresa May for saying that Britain “never totally felt at home being in the European Union”. But perhaps she was right after all.

• Ragnar Weilandt is a doctoral researcher at the Université libre de Bruxelles and the University of Warwick.