I VIVIDLY recall hearing Martin Schulz, then president of the European Parliament, talk in Berlin about his family’s experience of loss and poverty during the second world war and the fact that it was that bitter period which convinced him of the importance of the institutions that became the European Union.

I related so strongly to what he said because my father, at the age of 19, was taken off the beach at Dunkirk with a bullet in his knee, a wound he lived with for the rest of his life. The unimaginable horror of that experience didn’t happen to me at the age of 19, nor to my son, largely because an institution created by the victors reached out to the vanquished and said “never again”. That has been a key factor in banishing war from most of Europe for the last 75 years and securing an era of prosperity.

Victory in Europe (not Victory over Europe as one fanatically pro-Brexit tabloid mistakenly but significantly described it) is about bravery, sacrifice, the defeat of fascism and the liberation of millions from repression and arbitrary brutality. That should be – indeed must be – celebrated. It is telling that this type of remembrance has also been the focus of a city-wide holiday in Berlin this weekend.

But when such a thing becomes jingoism it can reveal an unpleasant exceptionalist streak and exceptionalism is too much in evidence these days .

For example it must take an extraordinary level of exceptionalist self-confidence to think that when faced with the worst economic slump since 1709 adding to it by continuing with an action that you know will cost jobs and prosperity is the best way forward.

But the UK are doubling down on their exceptionalist decision to actively refuse an extension to EU transition no matter the cost.

Last weekend a “source close” to the negotiators told the press that the EU should, essentially, take a jump to themselves. According to this “source” it was the EU that was out of step and that they (the EU that is) needed “to get themselves into a position where they can do a deal”

And then Michael Gove joined in, someone who can always make a bad situation even worse.

Giving evidence to a House of Lords Committee he insinuated that another strong reason for ignoring public opinion (massively in favour of an extension according to polls) was the likelihood that any continued closeness to the EU would make it harder for the UK to recover from the coronavirus. That exceptionalist and insulting assertion is backed up by not a single fact.

There is nothing that the EU is doing or is likely to do that would impinge adversely on the decisions of the UK or the devolved administrations about the pandemic. In fact the UK’s failure – for what appear to be ideological reasons – to join the EU equipment and PPE consortia suggests that greater involvement could have been positively beneficial.

The EU will certainly want to re-impose state aid rules at some stage but aligning with those would protect UK business, not harm it. Refusing to align would only lead to a race to the bottom,

Gove even went so far as to put a cost for the UK on this potential EU “interference” of between “£20 billion gross and £10 billion net” though he gave no clue as to how such seemingly precise figures were arrived at.

He did not mention of course that the cost to the UK of leaving the EU will have reached £200 billion by the end of this year (as Bloomberg Economics discovered this February).

This type of exceptionalism (everybody out of step except us, everyone less good at everything than we are) is not only financially foolish it is also reputationally ruinous.

And it will damage others. Phil Hogan, the EU Trade Commissioner, warned this week that a change in the UK stance is essential if the combination of Covid 19 and Brexit is not to deliver an “almighty blow to the UK economy” later this year, which he fears will spill over to other countries – including Ireland.

Yet still no-one wishes the UK ill. There remains time for a change of heart and the safe haven of an extension whilst next steps are reconsidered.

All that is needed is, in the words of Robert Burns, a decision to finally “ see oursels as others see us”.

Something that would, for Brexit at least, “frae monie a blunder free us, An’ foolish notion”.