As arguments for EU membership go, portraying Britain as a pot of cold baked beans isn't a good one

It takes a particular sort of mindset - that famously self-hating mindset of the English intellectual middle classes - to produce a visual metaphor like this one



This, we're told is Brexit. On the one hand a wonderful collection of foods from across Europe. on the other, cold baked beans. Now I understand the motivation of those who produced this, trapped as they are in the mythology of British food - we don't produce anything edible and that without Europe we'd, well, be stuck eating baked beans. This feeds the "Europe Good, Britain Bad" message that excites a certain type of enthusiast for the UK staying in the EU. And it acts to wind up people like me, a moderate eurosceptic, by displaying Britain as an austere, dreary, uncultured place made better by access to the goodness of Europe.

It's better, think this group of fanatics, to trash the thousands of great British foods so as to make a cheap point about Brexit. At the core of this, however, is the dislike of Britain - especially the English part of Britain - that the intellectual middle class has cultivated. Over there, you know, the roads are better, trains smoother, food better, drinks classier and women prettier. The clothes are better, the language cooler and, let me tell you, there's this little place just off the Rue St Martin that serves divine little pastries and coffee, you don't get that sort of place in England.

Forget about the possible damage done to Britain by Brexit, let's consider instead the actual damage done to Britain, to its image and standing in the world, by generations of smug intellectuals telling us we're a dull, grey little island with nothing to offer (while making sure Jolyon and Miranda get to go to our brilliant public schools, then to the best universities in the world and to live in London, the world's greatest city).

Much of the attacks on people who voted to leave the EU is couched in these terms. Any enthusiasm for things British - let alone English, that really is beyond the pale - is dismissed as the ignorant babbling of stupid people. Snarky little comments are made about how these are uneducated provincial people who wouldn't understand about the sophisticated stuff you only get in grand European capitals. We're all fat ignorant thickos who should just follow the lead of the shiny clever Europeans - a lead that has trashed Greece's economy, is destroying Italy and created a migrant crisis while blaming it on everywhere and everyone else.

I don't know about you but I'm proud of my culture. Not is a "remember the Empire" way but in seeing the bit of the world where I live as a fine place not as cold baked beans. I re-read Roy Porter's 'Enlightenment' recently and was reminded that Britain was, more than almost anywhere, the place where the ideas that shaped modern, liberal Europe were born. And not just the coffee shops of London but the Scottish Enlightenment of Smith and Hume, Birmingham's Lunar Men and the practical, creative engineers of Yorkshire and Lancashire. I'm proud of this contribution to a better world.

I'm proud of British food - we've escaped from the idea that it is uniquely bad (it never was but those middle class intellectuals with their creamy French cooking thought it so) and now have as rich and varied a choice of great local food and drinks as anywhere in Europe. Hundreds of different cheeses, better meat than Europe, great beer, some of the best sparkling wines, and shops and markets filled with fresh local produce. But I also love those sneered at working class dishes - parmo, rag pudding, fish and chips, the sausage roll and the steak pasty. Nowhere else has food like this and they are the poorer for not having it.

And yes I like morris dancing, village galas, home made jam and cake, folk songs and vintage tractors. When you fly back into Britain you look down and see that it really is a green and pleasant land, the best mapped, most networked, most accessible green and pleasant land in the world. For the cost of some decent boots, an OS map and a packed lunch you can spend a day tramping over hill an dale, along the rivers and canals enjoying nature in a landscaped shaped by generations of Brits.

So I will continue to get angry at those who belittle my country, who dismiss it as a small island of not much consequence. There's an argument about trade and our relations with those European neighbours - let's have it. But let's not make that argument about British culture, let's not dismiss that culture, our traditions and history as a pot of cold baked beans.

....