One of the arguments I hear in this context is that France, Spain, Germany have their own “populist” nationalist movements not unlike the sentiments behind Brexit. So the answer to your question “why aren’t the French, etc.” is “but they are!”

As for the assumption of superiority by “the intellectuals . . . looking down on the British working man”, that is a charge that could equally well be levelled at the leaders of the leave campaign.

My point was that whoever believes that Britain can once again achieve the same glories as it did in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in an overpopulated world facing the perils of climate change, mass migration, international terrorism and global corporatism (not necessarily in order of significance), standing alone rather than in collaboration with her neighbours, has a poor understanding both of history and the current state of the world, whatever his or her social “status”.