During the Olympics, the BBC and other broadcasters were even more jingoistic than usual about 'Team GB' and its haul of medals. On the international political scene, 'Team GB', the unelected government of Theresa May, is doing less well.
Matteo Renzi, the Italian prime minister who could hold the EU Presidency if May triggers Article 50 to begin the Brexit negotiations next year, is the latest of a string of EU and European parliamentary representatives to put the kybosh on the government's optimism about staying in the EU single market while not signing up to freedom of movement. As Renzi said, the EU cannot give more rights to a member which is leaving than to those who stay.
Dr Liam Fox, May's hawkish international trade secretary, said on the same day as Renzi's interview that the UK would become an independent member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as opposed to being represented by the EU and would comply with its tariffs and rules and thus carry 'the standard of free and open trade as a badge of honour'.
He seems to forget that the world is nowadays divided into regional economic groupings with their own rules and even allies such as the US have doubts about any quick special deals for a post-Brexit UK.
Such is the 'Rule Britannia' rhetoric after the English and Welsh decided to vote to leave the EU, dragging with them Scotland and Northern Ireland, the two domestic nations which voted — in Scotland's case overwhelmingly — to remain in. It is a rhetoric that ushers in an era of the rise of English nationalism.
For Scotland particularly, the exit from the EU will have devastating consequences. We know from a recent Fraser of Allander Institute report on the Scottish economy that the country will suffer budget cuts of over £1.6 billion over the next four years because of Brexit.
That will mean less spending on public services which will lead down the line to more poverty and failed targets to close, for example, the attainment gap in schools between kids in more affluent and more deprived areas.
The National Health Service that has kept the working class healthy for decades is already struggling to cope with an ageing population and we still in the Glasgow area have some of the worst health statistics in Western Europe, a legacy of Margaret Thatcher. With cuts in public expenditure, the NHS is unsustainable, leading no doubt to the neoliberal agenda of privatisation of health provision.
"I, frankly, feel more at home in the European Union than in the British one, especially now when there has been a huge increase in xenophobic attacks on other Europeans and even British-born people of colour."
While the economic and social cost of Brexit will be huge, especially for Scotland, we must remember there is also an affective cost for those of us who feel European. As an undergraduate, I studied for a year in Germany, speak five European languages besides English, have lived for lengthy periods in various European countries, and have visited either for work or pleasure nearly every other European country. I rejoice in the diversity of languages, culture, food, scenery and history displayed before you in countries within a few hundred kilometres of each other.
I, frankly, feel more at home in the European Union than in the British one, especially now when there has been a huge increase in xenophobic attacks on other Europeans and even British-born people of colour. It is not so much 'British' of course as 'English'. While Police Scotland logged no increase in hate crime since Brexit, its English/Welsh equivalent reported a 42 per cent increase. The irony is that the ageing population of all parts of the UK are often looked after in hospitals and care homes by the very people who have been attacked — and who may be expelled after Brexit happens. This is what English nationalism looks like and it is pretty brutish.
The new situation was rammed home to me in a recent trip to a conference in Salamanca, where there is a Scottish seminary, and Madrid, where I have Spanish friends. Everyone I met was shocked at the news and it was as if there had been a death in the family. On the flight back to Edinburgh, it became clear to me that the Brexiteers were about to take my European nationality away from me and replace it with a Little Englander mentality that sees foreigners through a prism of otherness, both in their own country as well as overseas, and themselves as superior.
In post-Brexit UK, this attitude will be compounded by the right-wing agenda of a Conservative party which may be in power for the next 20 years given the chaos in the Labour Party and there will be no social democratic policies coming from the EU to mitigate the effects of a xenophobic neoliberalism. That is not the kind of Union, or state, I want either to live in or to be part of.
Duncan MacLaren is an Adjunct Professor of Australian Catholic University and a PhD candidate in theology at the University of Glasgow.
Original artwork by Chris Johnston