Although it was intended as an insult, directed by the Prime Minister at such as people such as myself that wished to remain a European citizen, it is a title I am proud to claim. Perhaps an example from my life explains what I mean. At the age of eighteen I left my country home to study at a University in London. I left behind what many would regard as an idyllic life. Our family’s life moved to a rhythm dictated by the seasons. Winter meant a slowing down, the time when nature itself entered a dormant stage. Although his work never became dormant it was by January reduced to what were a series of maintenance tasks. Then with the coming of spring when nature began to revive, he became more active in his working life. This was the breeding season, when hatched pheasant chicks from eggs in the incubator, to be followed by transferring the thousands of young chicks to small secure nurturing pens. Then when summer reached its peak he worked from dawn to dusk, transferring and settling colonies of pheasant chicks in the surrounding woodland. Although it was a hard life working as a gamekeeper he loved it. Having rejected the alternative of an easier life in the city. When asked why he did not want an easier life in the city, he said that he could tolerate the noise of the city. This digression is necessary to explain why it was a wrench for me to leave country life behind. I should add that all my childhood friends remained attached to the countryside. Consequently I became distant and estranged from them to such an extent that I now find it difficult to recall there names and facial features.

When surrounded by and living amongst people who loved the country life, why did I leave? The reason for me was it was a matter of growing into maturity, I felt that to remain I would be trapped in an eternal adolescence, a sense of ‘not-grown-upness’. I had grown out of the country life. Today when my wife suggests how nice it would be to retire to a country cottage, my reaction is panic. What country life represents for me is a closing in of the intellectual horizon. A panic akin to claustrophobia, a fear of losing that sense of freedom which I treasure.

Perhaps my schooling accounted to my sense of an intellectual claustrophobia. I studied at a country secondary modern. A school in which the boys were expected to become farm labourers, factory hands or members of the armed forces . The girls typists or clerical assistants. Our education virtually ceased at fourteen, as at that age we had learn all that was needed to perform our expected future roles. What I developed was a sense of frustration, I knew that there was much more to learn, which I was being denied. Some of our teachers recognised our frustration, and by the time we reached the age of fifteen they offered us a chance to sit a new exam designed for secondary modern students. However even this was a source of frustration. The science textbook we used was the science of the 1930s. Obviously it was a reprint, but it ignored all the scientific developments that had taken place since 1945. What I can remember is that it state the space that made up most of the universe was the ether. I term I think that dated back to Isaac Newton’s time.

Although I loved the country life, I wanted more the escape from its narrow confining intellectual horizons. A rooted life, a sense of belonging for me was the surrender of my individuality. Going trout fishing at first light was an experience I will always treasure. However even when fishing alone in the early morning in the most idyllic of surroundings could not dispel my uneasy sense of being trapped. I could not see myself endlessly repeating this experience. I needed something more.

Unlike Theresa May I value that sense of rootlessness that she abhors. It gives you a chance to remake your self. There is nothing that forces or pushes you into a particular role. Now although everybody knew that I was a gamekeepers son, it was only for them a matter of some interest or curiosity, it was not my defining characteristic. In the country being a gamekeepers son circumscribed your opportunities. You were expected to fulfil one of two roles, either follow in your fathers footsteps or become a farm labourer. The only escape was to become a factory hand in the nearby town.

The young people I met in London, were cut adrift from there roots. All were seizing the opportunity to remake there lives. Revelling in the freedom that being an unknown gave you. None wanted to go back. Patriotism of the form that Mrs May is advocating was something we scorned, it was old a drawing back to our childhoods. How could you be a British patriot of this sort and enjoy the music of Jimmi Hendricks or all the other American stars. We wanted to be citizens of nowhere adopting whatever identity suited us at that moment. Our clothes, our appearance and behaviours represented a rejection of the past. London for the young then was at the centre of the youth fashion industry. Clothes were not patriotic they were international.

Within the youth culture there was an ironic attitude towards the symbols of patriotism. A clothes shop was named Lord Kitchener’s Valet. The historical Lord Kitchener was an austere unliveable, although competent general of the early 20th century and Empire. A man who stopped his men from shooting the mortally wounded enemy after battle, on the grounds that bullets cost money, he advocated the cheaper option of killing them with the bayonet. Now the shop that bore his name mocked all that he stood for, it celebrated frivolity.

With rootless goes a sense of openness, you are open to and welcome new experiences. Michael Oakshott said that education was the initiation into new experiences. This initiation he imagined would be achieved through an intermediary, the teacher. However the citizen of nowhere is a self education, always seeking to initiate themselves into new experiences. With this freedom goes a sense of emptiness. There are times when you reach barriers or limits to your intellectual explorations. I can look back and recall reading Baudelaire’s prose poems. He like me could suffer a sense of ennui. One such poem that expressed my discontent was the one in which he describes the bleak view from his window of the rainswept Parisian rooftops.

Now there is a closing in of the horizons. New patriots that is our Brexit seeking politicians see us ‘citizens of nowhere’ as a threat to them. I think because we pose a threat to the easy certainties they cling too. Europe is a threat to them as it threatens there certainties. The cordon sanitaire

that protected there world of childish certainties has gone. Europe is now longer across the channel its here, its there neighbour. These new patriots don’t want change, they want it kept away from them. Rejecting Europe is an anguished cry of pain. Not only do they want to expel Europe from their country but they also want to suppress the fifth columnists such as myself that are a viper’s nest of ‘foreigness’ and strange ideas. I am abused as a member of the elite, my education they say has rendered me unfit to be a man of the people. I have lost what they see as my sense of Britishness. Strangely enough politicians who are Oxbridge graduates and members of the upper middle class, don’t suffer from this curse of ‘eliteness’.

Theresa the many of us ‘citizens of nowhere’ will continue to reject your notion of Britishness. We don’t want to retreat back into your comforting world of childish patriotic certainties. Unlike you we want to embrace the world out there. Fortress Britain is a chilling idea, a denial of that step forward that means embracing the uncertainty that is out there. The patriotism of yourself and your colleagues represents nothing more than the suffocating dullness of a familiar comfort blanket.