‘So you’re going home.” This is something I hear a lot when I tell people that my wife and I have decided to move to Germany after 14 years of living in London. My reply is always the same: “Actually, we are leaving our home. This is our home.” We are moving to a country that my wife and I were born in and are citizens of, but which our children know only as a holiday destination. There was – and is – no burning desire on our part to live in Germany. I never missed the impoliteness, control freakery and permanent moaning that I associate with much of German public life.

There is, however, a definite urge to leave Britain, a country that has lost its way and, with it, many of its best qualities. In public discourse, pragmatism, level-headedness and tolerance (or at least benevolent indifference) have been largely replaced by uncompromising partisanship. The result of the EU referendum dismayed me, but did not surprise me. Ever since my time at Oxford University in the mid-90s, I had been aware of the deeply entrenched anti-EU sentiment, especially among politics graduate students – some of whom would go on to work with pro-Brexit politicians and in the media.

What that time did not prepare me for was the absurd spectacle that post-referendum British politics has mutated into. There seems to be no fudge, no disaster, no incompetence to which Britain’s current, distressingly myopic and feckless batch of politicians refuse to stoop, be they in government or opposition. The unworkable white paper thrashed out at Chequers, and the resignations, parliamentary chaos and no-deal threats resulting from it, have thrown the current level of ineptitude in British politics into sharp relief.

After the referendum, there was a shift in my journalistic remit. Before, I had what I will always consider the best job imaginable – reporting on the arts for the Süddeutsche Zeitung from the most culturally exciting and diverse city in the world. It was every arts journalist’s dream: I covered everything from the Turner prize to the Booker prize and interviewed artists such as Anish Kapoor, Ian McKellen and the Rolling Stones.

Since 24 June 2016, however, my job has been wall-to-wall Brexit coverage. I would not have been doing it properly if it had been any different. From a British perspective, it is the defining topic of our era, even though many Brits seem to prefer to ignore it, hoping it will just go away. In the run-up to the implementation of article 50 in March 2017, for instance, I started writing a daily “Countdown” column covering stories such as the diminished “Brexit Toblerone” to the harassment of our Polish friends after the referendum – and tracing how my perception of Britain had been changed by the result.

Brexit even made its way into arts coverage – for example, the National Gallery’s attempt to buy a painting by Jacopo da Pontormo from a US banker was scuppered by the slump in sterling, while the European Union Youth Orchestra, which had always had its headquarters in London, was forced to move to Italy.

My journeys outside the London bubble, before as well as after the referendum, made me aware of the broad spectrum of reasons for the Brexit vote, as well as of the fallout that is already happening, or is on the horizon. They showed me a Britain that is divided and directionless. Yet, looking at much of the domestic coverage, you would not know this. In most British media, journalists seem biased and underinformed in equal measure – and peddle the “will of the people” line unchallenged. One of the untruths repeated unquestioningly is the British government’s assertion that the status of the 3 million EU-citizens in this country is secure. Despite official protestations, it is still unclear what this status will be after Britain leaves the EU in March 2019. If the “settlement scheme” that the home secretary, Sajid Javid, has announced goes ahead, we would at best have to apply and pay to secure as a privilege something that free movement has so far guaranteed. Free movement is neither a privilege nor some kind of transactional immigration deal. It is a reciprocal arrangement between EU member states, which formed the legal basis of our move to Britain all those years ago. It has been changed unilaterally by the British government. We had no say in it.

Being used as bargaining chips for two years and then allowed to stay in our home for a fee, turning from citizens into supplicants, is hardly a democratic process – even though, currently, it is the best-case scenario. The assertion that “nothing’s agreed until everything’s agreed”, recently reiterated by the trade secretary, Liam Fox, makes it clear that, should there be a no-deal Brexit, all of this would be irrelevant. At worst, we could be stuck in Britain with no legal status at all. In the light of all this, it is surely better to jump than wait to be pushed.

To those who are tempted to reassure us that “it won’t happen”, I can only say: look at the many instances over the past few years where you said the same, and then precisely that thing happened. Of course, Germany has its own problems. In her capricious interior minister, Horst Seehofer, Angela Merkel now has her own Boris Johnson-type loose cannon. However, in Germany at least we won’t be totally politically disenfranchised. EU citizens had no say in any of the Brexit decisions – Commonwealth citizens living in the UK were allowed to participate in the EU referendum, we weren’t; and we never had the vote in parliamentary elections. What our status would be in local elections (which we have been able to vote in so far) is up in the air, as everything is still legally unclear.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Heading for disaster? Theresa May discusses Brexit with her cabinet at Chequers last month. Photograph: Joel Rouse/Joel Rouse/MoD/Crown Copyright

I imagine reactions to our departure will range from, “Oh, but we didn’t mean people like you” to “Good riddance, you won’t be missed”. To the former, I would reply: it doesn’t matter; the damage is done. Brexit will affect all EU citizens in the UK (and UK citizens in the EU) equally, and you don’t get to pick and choose. I do, however, tend to agree with the latter. The country won’t suffer terribly from having one fewer foreign arts journalist. It will be harder to replace the rest of my family, though. My sons – 13, 11, and seven years old – have dual citizenship but are all UK-born and have never lived outside Cricklewood, north-west London. All three were among the best students in their respective classes. They are rooted in Britain, and have visited (and in some cases been dragged to) more National Trust and English Heritage sites than you can shake a stick at.

When a young and very likable England team beat Colombia in their World Cup penalty shoot-out, my sons were delighted about the win. These were English boys supporting England. My children never had to choose between their German and British “identities” – a choice which I still hope they will never have to make. They have been very understanding about the reasoning behind the move. That doesn’t change the fact that they are leaving behind all their friends and, after a life shaped by the multiculturalism of one of the world’s great metropolises, now they will have to get used to an environment that is very different. For example, during our visit to his new school in Germany, one of my sons remarked, with some incredulity: “This is so weird – all the students are white!”

My wife, meanwhile, is leaving behind her post as a paediatric consultant at a London hospital. It was her firm belief in the egalitarian principles of the National Health Service, as well as the excellent medical training, that brought us to Britain in 2004. Her skillset and expertise, which she was fully committed to offer the NHS for the rest of her career, will now be applied elsewhere, just like those of many other excellent healthcare professionals from the EU.

A parliamentary briefing by the British Medical Association noted that almost half of doctors from the European Economic Area surveyed were considering leaving the UK after the referendum. And of those, more than a third have made concrete plans – that is almost one in five EU doctors working in the NHS (18%). A part of my wife’s job entails working with vulnerable children, and it remains unfilled - because the hospital so far has not been able to find a suitable replacement.

Having listened to myself talking about all of this quite passionately to a British friend, I asked him: “Am I overthinking this?” “No,” he said. “You are overfeeling it.” I have never considered myself an Anglophile; hopefully, my response to this complex nation has been more nuanced than uncritical adoration. But perhaps my friend was right. Our response to Brexit is as much emotional as a practical. Isn’t that correct, though, considering that the leave vote was entirely rooted in emotion? It is not easy to stay calm and rational when faced with the visceral, self-aggrandising, jingoistic drivel that flows endlessly from some in the leave camp. It is painful to see how Britain, particularly England, has bought into its own imperial, nostalgic myth and is now falling prey to the resulting delusions.

The discrepancy between the Brexit people thought they voted for and the one they will get reminds me a little of the story of Boaty McBoatface: “The people” voted to give that name to a 125-metre-long, state-of-the-art research vessel with a top speed of 17 knots and a helipad. What they got was a tiny, remote-controlled, unmanned, bright yellow submersible that looks like a suppository. Yet Boaty McBoatface, as disappointing as it may look, is much more useful than any form of Brexit. I would be delighted if this great project of national self-harm were not to happen. Unfortunately, I think it will, and we want to be gone when it does. For whatever shape Brexit takes, it will inevitably be worse than what we – what all of us – had before.