"No king, no country"? No, we don't have a 'king' at present, we have a queen. And we are still a country, no matter how much you try to belittle us.
Are you 'British'? if so you obviously have no pride in this, our nation

I always find lines like this worrying. They bring to mind Samuel Johnson's "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel" and Owen's

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

To be clear: I am not calling you a scoundrel, Nigel, not am I saying that Brexit can be meaningfully compared to the first world war. Patriotism can be a great and noble thing.

But it can also be exploited. It is always, I think, an appeal to the emotions and it is very easily used to hide the weakness of an underlying argument.

And my experience, so far as it goes, it is most used so that a person can say 'I am Patriotic and you are not'. Which amongst other things fails to grasp that different people can have different interpretations but both be patriotic.


So let's leave such slurs to one side, please.