The larger problem is politics. Brexiteers are never happier than when thundering about their own country’s proud sovereignty, their desire to see British interests put first, and the noble willingness of a democratic people to resist bullying by experts and big businessmen and other bullies when their dignity and democratic rights are at stake.
But here is the hitch. Those same Brexiteers are startlingly incurious about what foreigners think and feel, and disdainfully sure that they either love Britain enough to do as requested (cf the cheques written on America’s account) or will submit to bullying by big boys (cf those predictions that BMW will tell Europeans what to do).
The double-standards are striking. Brexiteers take their own political sensitivities exceedingly seriously, but fail to remember that America and other EU nations are democracies, too, with governments that have to answer to their own angry, populist electorates.
To focus on America, it is possible to think that removing all remaining trade barriers with Britain is a splendid idea, and to believe—as Mr Obama suggested—that asking for a new bilateral trade deal now shows quite shockingly bad timing. If Brexiteers think that this is just a problem of having a Democrat in the White House, let them answer these questions. Do they think that a newly-elected President Trump would be willing to put a hold on building a wall with Mexico and slapping tariffs on China to spend political capital and energy on a new pact promoting free trade with Britain? If Mr Ryan is still Speaker in January or Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is still Republican leader in the Senate, do they imagine that their hearts would soar at being asked, as a first order of business, to get a free trade pact through the next Congress? And if Democrats are in charge in Congress, do Brexiteers think it would be any different?
In their navel-gazing parochialism, Brexiteers seem not to have considered that the same populist forces sweeping them to victory in their EU referendum are also sweeping every other Western democracy. It is possible to be a tea-drinking, Downton Abbey-watching senator and not have any desire to offend voters back home by doing Britain a favour on trade. All politics is domestic. Brexiteers are supposed to know that.