From the Observer link, re the passport shenanigans:

"Yet this very British piece of puerile chauvinism is a phenomenon worth examining. It speaks to a largely imagined era of global imperial glory, inflated and magnified by time."

Exactly. Another crumb for the little Englanders, with their illusory ideas of former glories (aka ruthless exploitation of those feckless black chappies...), to justify the ever-receding vision of a glorious future cut adrift from the EU...