The Remainers have had every opportunity to present referendum voters with a positive vision for Britain’s future inside the supranational EU. Yet, I have still not heard a single credible reason to accept that the EU should remain the supreme law-making authority in the British Isles. Everything offered either relates to the Single Market—which non-EU Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein participate in via the EFTA/EEA agreement—or awards credit for achievements that were hard-won by phlegmatic British people down the ages to the EU bureaucracy.

To that end the dismally negative Stronger In campaign has sought to suborn the British people’s battles for workers rights, our proud history of trades union membership, and solidarity between working people more generally; the fight for women’s rights, from the Suffragettes through to Barbara Castle and the Equal Pay Act 1970, and onward to today; as well as our deep seated commitment to environmental protection, and love of the countryside, given poetic form by Shelly, Byron and Wordsworth, and later legal form in the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949.

What we have witnessed in lieu of a positive future vision is witless abuse, scowling and condescension. Though the words may change, the message is always the same; know your place, the people that matter have already decided for you.

So, it came to be that I found myself reading yet another article written by Simon Tilford, this one petulantly titled, “If we leave the EU, other countries will think we’re a bunch of spoilt children. They’ll be right”. This, ladies and gentleman is what psychologists call “projection”.

Even the thought of Britain leaving the EU—there is still a lot of work to be done—is enough for many people among the Remain contingent to throw their toys out of the pram. Tilford’s article, like so many others, does not make the case for supranational EU government, it is just a litany of self-pity, ennui and despair.

If only everybody else were as “intelligent” or “enlightened” as he. Or could be made to be. Now there is a thought. Why ever address the grubby perspectives of the rabble when supranational institutions above the traditional nation-state can remove the electorate from the equation?

The heart of Tilford’s gripe is the refusal of us lowly plebs to recognise that common government is necessary to access and participate in the Single Market (only, it isn’t):

Although British Eurosceptics are determined to see things differently, the UK does extremely well out of the EU. Thanks to its negotiating skills and brinkmanship it enjoys special status: the country is a full member with unimpeded access to the single market – the most successful bit of the EU – but is not a member of the eurozone, which is without doubt the EU’s greatest failure. The rest of the eurozone has not foisted damaging policies on Britain, as they have on Italy and Greece. Nor is Britain a member of the Schengen passport-free area, though one would be hard put to know this from the hysterical coverage of the refugee crisis in the British press.

Once again we find a Remainer implying that the EU is a trading organisation rather than a government which makes policies for Britain and the other EU Member States— and increasingly seeks to override our independent representation at the international level.

This is also yet another example of a Remainer arguing that the best parts of Britain’s relationship with the EU are the areas in which Britain is less integrated than the other EU Member States. There is a certain logic to that if Tilford cared to follow it to its conclusion.

Remaining in the EU means more remote and less accountable decision-making and if there is a case for imposing a one-size-fits-all policy approach to a vast geographical area as large as the European continent then I have yet to hear it. Indeed, I have not heard anybody in the Remain camp even attempting to make that case.

No, it is all fear, lies and despair. Yet, sometimes in the same sentence as asserting that Britain is too small, too weak and too stupid to exercise the same level of independence as say Suriname, Barbados or Panama, let alone Australia, New Zealand or the USA, Remainers will also say that Britain leaving the EU would bring an end to Western civilisation and provoke a global recession. Where the hell do these people get off telling us that our arguments are not firmly based?

The fact is that Remainers refuse to engage with the best arguments that we have to offer, preferring to spar with the numpties at the heart of Vote Leave.

The rest of the article is yet more tedious and irrelevant allusions to “imperial nostalgia”, as if that means anything to anybody voting in 2016. This is just another rhetorical stick Tilford enjoys using against people with which he is unable to argue.

The article concludes: “The damage Brexit will inflict on the EU and on the broader Western international order will be seen by the EU and the US as an act of strategic vandalism, and the UK will not easily be forgiven for it. The country will rightly be seen as unserious and unreliable.” So here again we have Tilford more concerned about the “damage” that the people of Britain asserting their commitment to nation-state democracy would have upon another sovereign state and a supranational treaty organisation. I am not impressed and nor am I convinced. These petulant bully-boy tactics are really not good enough.

Most countries are not in the EU. The UK has only a limited role in the EU outside of the euro and outside of Schengen and none of the Remainers even attempt to argue otherwise. The purpose of the EU is political and judicial union. Those that wish to amalgamate should be left to do so. Britain will be a far better friend and ally to the EU working as a co-operative partner rather than as a subordinate sub-unit.

Serious countries are self-governing and that is what Britain needs to be.