The reality is that both stories contain elemental truths. Brexit is a revolution and a conservative decision that seeks no immediate break—but that might usher one in anyway. It is an act of British radicalism, no doubt, but one that can really be understood only within a much wider story of European radicalism.

Stand back, and Brexit raises questions far greater than the debates over the rights and wrongs of the referendum decision and Johnson’s subsequent prosecution of it. Brexit is a real-life proxy for some of the most fundamental questions facing all nation-states today: How to remain prosperous and sovereign in a globalized economy; how to maintain the corrective power of national democracy within supranational institutions; and ultimately, how ordinary citizens can retain control over their lives and livelihoods in a world in which more and more areas of life are deemed beyond national political control, whether in regard to trade and tariffs (should Britain embrace free trade, protectionism, or a mix of both?), or immigration and national citizenship (who and how many people should be allowed into a country and when should they receive the same rights as the citizens already there?).

It is this Brexit story that underpins Britain’s exit from the EU—the story of a country that voted to buck the post-war order and “take back control,” but has little idea whether that is even possible anymore, or indeed, whether it had ever lost control in the first place. It is also a story that does not begin or end at 11 p.m. tomorrow, the formal point of rupture, but one that started decades ago and will likely last decades longer.

In August 1962, a then 79-year-old Clement Attlee rose to his feet in the House of Lords to address the question of Britain’s application to join the European Economic Community, the EU’s forerunner. Attlee was no ordinary legislator but the Labour Party’s greatest prime minister and wartime deputy to Winston Churchill. His 1945 government had ushered in a postwar socialist consensus, established NATO, and clandestinely developed Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent. By 1962, though, Britain was falling behind mainland Europe economically, but still rejected an invitation to join its emerging union. Despite Britain’s troubles at home, Attlee remained adamantly opposed to British membership.

To Attlee, the prospect of Britain joining the EEC signaled a seismic change in the country’s foreign and economic policy. It would prioritize Britain’s relationship with Europe over the rest of the world and cede national control for regional influence. “We are going to be confined in our powers of running our own affairs,” he said. “It might be right, it may be​ wrong, but do not make any mistake: It is entirely different from anything we have had before.” In the EEC, he went on, Britain would become a mere “appendage to Europe.”