Back from the UK after a month there, and travelling through northern Europe on the way back to Sweden, the differences between the two (or several) places appear stark. Of course this might be because the part of England I was visiting is a particularly downtrodden one, and the Stockholm suburb we live in currently is rather better-off.

But the Dutch, German and Danish places we passed through on the way were also consistently cleaner, tidier and pleasanter than almost anywhere in England. This was, I reflected, in spite of their having been extensively bombed by the RAF and the USAF in the 1940s. – Or maybe it was because of that? Northern Germany in particular had to be almost entirely rebuilt, and so was, restoring its ancient buildings in a way that reflected the Germans’ pride in them – those glorious brick cathedrals, for example – and seemed to indicate a wish to roll back their history to pre-Nazi times, and start again.

Of course there is a contrary wind blowing in just now from the former DDR, whose towns and buildings I’m less familiar with. The first time I was in Halle, many years ago, there were potholes in the roads, and even in the floor of its cathedral, and brown coal dust everywhere. Does this make a political difference, even slightly? Are the nice clean towns and villages of the West as fertile a soil for the likes of the AfD, as are dirty, run-down ones?

As soon as we get into Holland and Germany it’s like entering modernity. They have even planted neat high hedges along the sides of the motorways. (Maybe the dirt and coal dust lie behind them.) Domestic buildings are well kept, freshly and attractively painted, mostly well designed if they are new, and sensitively restored if not. Another thing we noticed was that all the cars are modern and shiny, with not an older one – say more than five years old – among them. The same applies here in Stockholm, where the only older cars you see are big American 1960s open-top Chevrolets, driven around at weekends for fun; or antique Volvos being lovingly repaired and restored for veteran auto shows. All the rest are new, shiny, and usually electric.

Of course there are things I miss about dirty old Britain: small friendly butchers’ shops, for a start. (There are none in our Stockholm neighbourhood, only big supermarket meat counters. ‘Elf’n’safety’, I presume.) There’s a certain picturesque attraction about Newland Avenue in Hull that you don’t get in Enskede. But that aside, the contrast is striking. Entering continental Europe from northern Britain – and vice-versa – feels like passing through a time warp.

Has this anything to do with Britain’s coming out of the EU?