The past provides the context for the present and establishes what is reasonable.I have had a german partner for 37 years now so have met many germans through her and my work they have put behind them the stupidness of their parents generation and have almost 100% moved on, we brits seem to wallow in the past and the past cannot be brought back, it happened I lost relative that I never got to know my partner also. Just lets stop this nationalist bullishness from rising again.
Another point kind of connected though to this thread is that I started at a luxury UK car firm last monday and almost all the leather workers are Polish, funny that!
The hackneyed trope that the British more than other nations live in the past is utter nonsense. The EU exists primarily as a reaction to the past and its advocates all argue that as its greatest virtue.