Sneering. Unpatriotic. Gloomy. Remainers who mock the return of the blue British passport are showing their true colours . . .

HOW sad — and utterly predictable. News that the traditional blue UK passports will be revived after Brexit has left many Remainers fulminating with rage and rancour.

Labour MPs have been queuing to voice their displeasure at this inspired and patriotic move.

For example, Tottenham MP David Lammy says the return of the blue passport means that ‘Brexit is beginning to feel like a huge effort to turn the clock back with some misguided imperial overtones’.

And from across the political divide, Lord (Charles) Powell, who was Mrs Thatcher’s most respected private secretary when she was in Downing Street, was even more scornful.

He sneered that the new passport was ‘ part of the nostalgia on which the predominantly elderly Brexit constituency thrives’.

How typical of such people to deride something that will be a potent, everyday symbol of Britain’s independence from the EU come 2019.

Pragmatic

Disingenuously, during the referendum campaign, Powell claimed that if she had still been alive, Mrs Thatcher would have considered the vote to be ‘anti-democratic’ and she would have campaigned to Remain.

I disagree. And I believe that no one would have been more delighted by the move back to blue passports than Mrs T.

Not because Margaret Thatcher was a hard-line antiEuropean or an imperialist determined to turn the clock back to the 19th century when Britain ruled the world.

No, she was always a pragmatic and sensible politician and never let such emotional factors dictate what she thought best for Britain.

Above all, she was a Conservative. And as such, she always understood the value of national symbols — be it our flag, our currency, the monarch — or the British passport. (Remember, too, how she shamed British Airways into reverting to Union flag tailfins after it experimented with ethnic ‘world art’ designs?)

The fact is that Conservatives have long realised that such symbols represent political authority and the traditions of society accumulated over centuries. They understand such traditions help to bind people and communities, providing a national rallying point and sense of identity.

By contrast, too many on the Left have held that national symbols are irrational, misguided and wrong. Indeed, they have been contemptuous of the nation state itself, seeing it as the source of wars and exploitation.

Karl Marx viewed belief in the nation state as a form of ‘false consciousness’ which distracted workers from pursuing their real interests, and fighting the class enemy.

So it is no surprise that Jeremy Corbyn’s neo-Marxist Labour Party should disdain the new blue passports.

For its part, it makes perfect sense that Theresa May’s government should reintroduce something that was such an important symbol of British national identity. And, indeed, from 2019, will be so again.

The burgundy EU passports — forced on us in 1988 — were a striking example of what made so many Britons dissatisfied with EU membership and how our sense of nationhood was being subsumed into a Brussels-run superstate. And thus 17 million of them voted to quit the EU.

When this country joined what was then the Common Market more than 40 years ago, Britons were told by prime minister Edward Heath that they were joining a free trade area and Britain was not giving up its ability to govern itself.

The appearance of a joint EU passport was just one of many things that showed this was a blatant lie. It came unannounced. Nobody voted for it. Nobody wanted it.

Above all, it was typical of the EU: completely undemocratic, imposed from above by a pan-national elite contemptuous of nation states.

Most shamefully, it showed that national borders were of little consequence. Whereas the old version merely entitled a citizen of another nation to cross national borders, anyone with a European passport would be instantly recognised at frontiers and receive equal treatment from the authorities.

But, of course, it offered much more than that.

EU nationals could come to Britain and stay as long as they liked. They could look for work and claim British benefits while they did so. They could, and often did, undercut British workers.

Crucially, a European passport meant they could make full use of the British welfare state — an entitlement which has been widely exploited.

In truth, many foreigners have seen that our welfare state is more generous than anything similar offered in their own countries and have come here to take advantage.

The British are a deeply tolerant and generous people, and we will remain so after Brexit. But there are limits to such generosity.

And this is why the European passport has, like the unelected, unaccountable Brussels machine, become a symbol for so much that people don’t like about the EU.

Insult

To say a return to the blue passport is ‘part of the nostalgia on which the predominantly elderly Brexit constituency thrives’, as Lord Powell does, is, frankly, an insult.

I should point out that Powell, who has sat on the board of many large international companies, will have seen those firms thrive by using cheap labour from other EU countries.

His affluent ilk, too, will have benefited from such cheap foreign labour in other ways — from domestic helpers, to builders and plumbers.

However, the experience has been very different for millions of hard-pressed British workers.

The period when the burgundy European passport has been in use has seen their pay often cut, their jobs threatened, and the public services — such as the NHS, education, housing and transport — on which they depend come under huge extra pressure from people born abroad.

And for Labour MPs to champion the European passport is to sneer at their own heartlands who have struggled to cope with the economic conditions it has helped to create.

Many of these MPs despise the concept of national citizenship and Britishness — and yearn to be ‘citizens of the world’ instead.

Tainted

To them, any passport is anachronistic. Certainly, this is the philosophy of the bureaucrats in Brussels. They seem intent on obliterating any signs of nationhood — having got a common European currency, an EU foreign policy and their ultimate goal: a United States of Europe.

While the EU referendum campaign was tainted by the lies of Remainers with Project Fear, we are now hearing similar lies about the decision to reintroduce an old- style blue British passport.

James Caan, multi-millionaire and TV personality from Dragons’ Den, said it will cost £ 500 million to change the colour of the passport. This was completely untrue and he was forced to retract his claim.

But the attitude of Caan — part of the country’s smug rich — demonstrates that many Remainers still don’t understand the deep-seated reasons why the majority rejected Brussels rule.

A passport is a symbol of nationhood. And the British passport is no exception — famously stating: ‘ Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State requests and requires in the name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance, and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary.’

Above all, it symbolises British common values and the way we stand together. While reminding us of our magnificent past, it is also confirmation of an independent future.

Those who sneer at the return of our blue British passport are guilty of sneering at people who want this country to take the opportunity of having a much better future outside the EU.