Sorry - a comment from the Simon Kuper article in the FT which I thought was quite powerful:
"A saddening piece, not least because the educated classes should remember and try to avoid the risks of history as experienced by others. Whether the slow decline of a Portugal, which yet retains self-respect, or the collapse of a less deeply rooted Argentina, the fact is that powerful countries do decay, and the UK is decaying.
The EU's perceived scale and power (though exercised in limited ways, in reality) is probably cause, manifestation and the projection of fears that arise when the self-certainty and security of being at heart of the world's greatest empire gives way to the recognition, in globalised world, that we are no longer protected as were, even in the aftermath of WWII, by our inherited strengths.
The EU 'causes' the fears, because we feel threatened, rather than supported by the growth of the EU's political power; it manifests the fears through the playing out in the press of the narrative of EU dominance and in parliament through the 'vassalage' debate; and it is a projection of these now-focused fears because its power so reveals nakedly the post-imperial weaknesses of the UK: that's why so much of the Brexit narrative is built around betrayal, ambush, lack of respect and themes that, if we were an imperial power, would once have brought about the despatch of a gunship, or a battalion of Scots Guards.
How dare Luxembourg 'ambush' our PM?!
The total lack of respect for facts, and the avid embrace of the betrayal narrative shows how dangerous the situation has become.
Yet the underlying tigger for the expression of these frustrations through the Brexit vote was probably economic. Economic insecurity and stagnant incomes; the gig economy, the abolition of the social safety net and the stench of self-entitled rent-seeking sitting on top of the whole putrid mess."