While Brexiteers wave their blue passports with pride, the sensible lot will be hiding it in shame

If you think that Britain is now prouder than France, Germany or Spain, it is not condescending, patronising or anything else to say, very clearly, that you are stupid. Where your brain should be, there is a breeze block

It becomes far easier when you liberate yourself from the delusion that you don’t care. If you keep saying you don’t care, keep clicking the “I don’t care” box on online polls asking whether or not you care about the “return” of the “iconic” blue passport, never once carried by almost anybody under the age of 50, then you do care.

And I, I have now decided freely to admit, do care. A lot.

Why? Not because it matters, but because it comes as a fun festive reminder of the Spirit of Utter Drivel that so needlessly broke a nation.

Observe the Prime Minister’s words this morning: “The UK passport is an expression of our independence and sovereignty – symbolising our citizenship of a proud, great nation. That’s why we have announced that the iconic blue passport will return after we leave the European Union in 2019.”

And there, 18 months on from the referendum, still lies the dividing line between Remainers and Brexiteers. One that shows absolutely no sign whatsoever of repair.

It is the spirit that drove Brexit. It is that a very, very large percentage of this country simply believe that Britain is prouder, greater and just downright better than the rest of Europe. It is the conviction that compels a now former cabinet minister Priti Patel to stick not one but three plastic union jacks on her office door.

It is the spirit, perfectly articulated by the Prime Minister, that genuinely believes that now Britain has its own passport, it is prouder and greater than the other European nations that don’t.

To be absolutely clear: if you think that, having left the European Union, and with its own new passport to wave, Britain is now prouder than France, prouder than Germany, prouder than Spain, it is not condescending, patronising or anything else to say, very clearly, that you are stupid. You are a straightforward, knuckle-dragging Neanderthal. Where your brain should be, there is a breeze block.

Then there is the other, very very large percentage of the population, that considers its European neighbours as equals. It can see that in a rapidly shrinking world, in which power and influence is moving away from the small nations of Western Europe whose greatness came to an end many decades ago, the route to power and influence in the years to come is via the union we have, in an act of straightforward, knuckle-dragging stupidity, chosen to leave.

There are, naturally, other microcosmic flavours of Brexit bulls*** to be enjoyed here. Nigel Farage called it the “first tangible victory” of Brexit, which is nothing if not an accidentally accurate verdict of precisely how well everything is going. Then there’s the fact, almost too tedious to have to repeat, that proud European Union member Croatia already has a blue passport. The UK could have had whatever colour passport it wanted at any point in the past 30 years. And that this whole little saga comes straight from the land of bent bananas, and the ban on eight-year-olds blowing up balloons and the recyclability of teabags, all utterly made up 20 years ago by an utterly shameless man whose utter shamelessness has now driven him all the way to becoming Foreign Secretary.

Then there are the general gerontocracy aspects. That Brexit was just another misery delivered on young by old. As it happens, yesterday night I happened to mention that no one below the age of 45 has ever had a blue passport. The new burgundy passports came in 1988, meaning you should, in theory, had to have been born in 1972. A few people online have since pointed out there are exceptions, and I make no apology for quoting one such person in full, a local councillor from Colchester called Nick Barlow.

“My first passport was blue, and I still have it because it’s an important reminder of a time that’s gone,” he said on Twitter. “I got it when I was at school because our trip to Germany included going to Berlin, and you had to have a full passport for that. Because to get to (West) Berlin from where we were visiting (near Hannover), you had to go through East Germany.

“And so my old blue passport has a GDR stamp in it, and I keep it to remind me of a time when Europe was divided by walls and fences and hard-faced border guards with machine guns coming onto our coach. And when I went back to Berlin a few years ago, I didn’t need to get a stamp in my burgundy passport.

“Not when we arrived, not when we went back and forth over the land where the Wall had been. And not when we went on a trip out east and visited a town on one side of a river. And not even when we crossed the river to visit Poland for a little while.

“No one even asked to see my passport, let alone demand to put a stamp in it. So yes, blue passports are deeply symbolic ... of a time when we were throwing up borders and trying to constrain and control people and their ambitions. I’ll stick with the one that represents an end to hard borders, thanks.”

So yes, in a few years time, there will be two types of British people wandering around foreign airports. One will remove its passport from its pocket in a small paroxysm of national pride. A little endorphin rush will ripple through their microscopic little brains.

And, to repeat, no this is not patronising. These people call the tune now. They have taken control. The nation dances to their beat. They cannot be patronised.

Then there is the other type, who, before getting on with their day, will just feel a slight pang of shame at being compelled to have to produce this document that shows its holder to be from a nation that decided it was better than everybody else, and then voted to impoverish itself to prove it.