After Brexit, the practical implications sank in first. I live in Paris, and the FT pays me in pounds, so when sterling collapsed I took a pay cut. (Leave voter: “Poor you. Now you know what it feels like for ordinary people.”) I will also have to start the long, boring process of requesting a French passport.
But, like my fellow cosmopolitans with university degrees, I suspect I will cope. If the British economy tanks, the main victims will probably be people at the bottom rather than my over-privileged tribe. Instead, the main impact of Brexit on my lot is that it reshapes European geography. We cosmopolitans like living in cosmopolitan cities and, until June 24, London was prime among those. Now Paris might usurp it.
Today’s big political divide (as Marine Le Pen has said) is between globalists and nationalists. I was born a cosmopolitan in Uganda, to parents from South Africa who had somehow obtained British passports. I, therefore, have a “Remain” gene, just as many people in provincial England were born with the “Leave” gene. Neither they nor I can help it.