Funny you should mention stupidity.

Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark was published in 1996, so the reference to the coming millennium ages it a bit, but it's timeless enough that it elucidates why people like yourself have reverted to lizard-brained heuristics:

I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us - then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.

The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.

The cognitive dissonance you're feeling is because that you're arguing for a history of the UK that never happened.