SO how did it come to this?

We formally leave the European Union at 11pm this evening, and to have a hope of understanding how we got here we must unfortunately give the last word to Nigel Farage.

We all know him well by now, this self-appointed tribune who has transformed British politics without ever sitting on the green benches or holding government office. To many, he is the ultimate embodiment of power without responsibility, a part-time pedagogue, but there is no denying his prescience or perceptiveness.

Speaking in the European Parliament as British MEPs prepared to depart for the last time, he declared that there was a historic battle going on between globalism and populism. “You may loathe populism, but I’ll tell you a funny thing – it’s becoming very popular,” he barked at his fellow MEPs.

No more financial contributions, no more European Court of Justice, he cheered, “no more being talked down to, no more being bullied”.

Well, you may loathe Mr Farage, but you won’t find a more apposite summary of what brought us here than that short speech.

Whether you regard it as a “monumental act of self-harm”, in common Remainer parlance, or as “taking back control”, to quote a certain bus, this journey to Brexit began in the anti-globalisation sentiment that convulsed UK politics from the early 1990s onwards. It was then, with foreign investors taking over British businesses, other countries undercutting British industry and the UK facing a humiliating exit from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, that people’s sense of helplessness in the face of economic stagnation attached to the idea that globalisation in general and the EU in particular were to blame. It is no accident that academics pinpoint this period as the moment when English nationalism (much exploited by Ukip) began to flower again.

It was voters in Britain’s post-industrial heartlands who justifiably felt talked down to, bullied and overlooked, though not specifically by the EU. Vote Leave then tapped that mood. Such Eurosceptic rhetoric has always sounded laughable to Remainers, who take it literally – of course the EU hasn’t “bullied” Britain. What rubbish! But Mr Farage doesn’t really believe it either. He’s been talking to potential Leave voters all along.

And so we are leaving because, supposedly, we are reclaiming our sovereignty.

The tragedy is that that sovereignty is a mirage – it always has been – and we will be leaving the most successful peace-keeping project of all time, with all its economic boons, for a fraught future with no more control, and arguably less, than we have now

Because what is sovereignty? It is a country’s supreme power to govern itself. Unless you cut yourself off from the globalised economy, then some pooling of sovereignty is inevitable and in the national interest. It’s true that not every EU provision has made sense in a British context (the Common Fisheries Policy, for instance) but the benefits, from security cooperation, to the common market to the level-playing field, have been truly vast.

By leaving the EU we will just have to curry favour with other, more capricious foreign entities instead. Sovereignty is not power; we are “taking back control” just to cede it elsewhere.

It is one of the many ironies about Brexit that EU membership has helped us define our Britishness. Our strong labour rights – those poor Americans with their 10-day holiday entitlement! – animal welfare standards, the environmental regulations that protect our fiercely loved wildlife: these things get to the heart of who we are. But it is these standards that could come under attack as the Government wrestles with a sluggish economy after Brexit. Some standards will also be challenged by hawkish foreign countries as the price of trade deals, deals which also inevitably involve investor courts, highly controversial dispute resolution tribunals that give corporations a forum to sue governments. Can that really be taking back control?

The economic cost of Brexit we now know will be very substantial and is likely to be the dominant impact in a year’s time, when nothing but a deal on basics like industrial goods is likely to have been agreed.

But it is the impact of Brexit on the kind of nation Britain becomes and our ability to act effectively against global threats, that could be its most profound legacy.

My parents were born in the 1930s. My father’s first memory is of the outbreak of the Second World War; my mother witnessed the postwar devastation in Europe. While at school in 1953, she heard a speech about plans for a European community that would help ensure war never scarred Europe again. She felt both elation and relief. Both were enthusiastic supporters of plans to join the EEC in 1973.

Today, my father, now 82, sounds weary and exasperated. To him, leaving the EU is a massive backwards step. He worries most of all about our ability to tackle global problems, particularly climate change, and our ability outside the European club to keep ourselves and others safe, in a world dominated by unpredictable superpowers. My mother understands why people where she grew up in the north of England voted for Brexit and believes that we have to make the best of things, but she too is despondent.

Eleven o’clock will come and go but Brexit ain’t over yet. Negotiations with the EU will take many years, whatever the Government pretends and one day, British voters may change their minds. Who knows. One positive is that from the outside, perhaps we will be able to see the EU for what it really is – not a tyrant superstate, but a club of nations who stick together, often against the odds. At its heart it is still the progressive peace project described to my mother all those years ago. Perhaps we will see at last how the greatest challenge to the right-wing Polish regime, in its efforts to politicise Poland’s courts, comes from the European Court of Justice. Perhaps we will waken up to the fact that Hungary’s populist, immigrant-bating demagogue Viktor Orban has also been curbed by Brussels’ threats. Perhaps we will finally notice that the EU is one of the world’s greatest defenders of democracy and the rule of law.

Or perhaps we will not. Mr Farage has won and will hold a gloatathon in Parliament Square tonight to ram the point home.

He gets the last word – for now. But the next chapter is yet to be written.

Read more: Why Brexit Day will teach this Yes voter hard truths about independence