All this domestic turmoil is indicative of the way in which Brexit goes to the heart of Britain’s national identity. For this reason, it is hard to believe that the jingoistic associations of The Daily Mail’s cartoon were a coincidence. Brexit is rooted in imperial nostalgia and myths of British exceptionalism, coming up as they have — especially since 2008 — against the reality that Britain is no longer a major world power.

This is evident in Mrs. May’s rhetoric. Her Brexit speech, for instance, invited us to imagine the “Global Britain” that will somehow emerge once the country has left the European Union, its citizens “instinctively” looking, as she has claimed the British do, to expand their horizons beyond Europe and exploit opportunities across the world. This is simply a sanitized version of the dream of a British Empire in which every eastern and southern corner of the globe could be imagined as an Englishman’s rightful backyard, ready for him to stride into, whenever he so chose, to impose his will and make his fortune.

The bullishness of the Brexiteers represents a progression from an earlier era of revived empire nostalgia that might be described as the “Keep Calm and Carry On” era. From the mid-2000s, tropes such as the titular wartime posters, alongside a rediscovered love for old-timey delicacies like tea, cupcakes and gin, offered a retreat from a world made freshly hostile to the middle class by the global financial crisis.

These tropes abide today — but they have ceased acting merely as a shelter, for those who live surrounded by them, against politics. They have now become an active, transformative political force. It’s not just The Daily Mail cartoon, or Mrs. May’s crypto-imperialist rhetoric. It’s the U.K. Independence Party leader Paul Nuttall, striding about in a tweed jacket and matching hat like a Victorian country squire. It’s the Brexit secretary David Davis, responding to complaints from the Civil Service that it lacks the budget to deal with the logistics of leaving the European Union by invoking the Blitz spirit of World War II. It’s the foreign secretary Boris Johnson saying that France’s president, François Hollande, “wants to administer punishment beatings to anyone who chooses to escape, rather in the manner of some World War II movie.” Those most under the spell of imperial nostalgia have now become the sorcerers themselves, having somehow managed to conjure up a mandate to transform Britain in their image.

But no matter how confident the Brexiteers might be, their grip on reality remains patchy at best. Global Britain’s delusions are unlikely to withstand the shock of actually leaving the European Union. One indication of this came shortly after the referendum result, when it emerged that Marmite, an iconic British food, was actually owned by a Dutch company, Unilever. Its prices are set to go up after Britain leaves the European Union. Andrea Leadsom, the minister for the environment, food and rural affairs, has indicated that Britain’s post-Brexit trade strategy will be primarily based around the export of jam, biscuits and cheese. Britain, it seems, is in danger of becoming the world’s largest church fete.