EU and Me

I've just returned from a trip to Germany. My family and I stayed with another German family we are friends with, in a town called Freiburg. The interesting thing about the geography of Freiburg is that it is located close to the borders of both France and Switzerland. Indeed, there's a spot close to the Black Forest where you can look out to the horizon at both France and Switzerland in the same eyeline view whilst standing in Germany.

During the trip there were moments that made me feel sad about how my country, the UK, had managed to engineer itself into Brexit. We are now, at time of writing, a country decided upon a course of action that will extricate us from the European Union. We're leaving Europe. The country , my country, was called upon to vote and after months of misinformation and pledges that didn't have a valid underlining of truth. . .

. . . and a campaign built on generating a sense that the UK, this precious little island of ours, was under threat by foreign invaders, 52% of the country determined that leaving was the best course of action. Actually, that's not true. It wasn't 52% of the country - it was just 52% of the people that voted. There was somewhere in the region of 30% of the population who didn't, or couldn't, vote. 

The remarks about that vote have long been voiced and picked apart and argued over; that it was mainly the old that voted to Leave and are determining the future for the young that wanted to Remain; that the vote was based on a campaign where truth was scarce and rhetoric was everywhere. The PM who arranged for the vote, David Cameron, resigned once the Leave vote was won. The chief co-ordinators of the Leave campaign - Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage - have faded from any form of political sway. 

It was like boisterous revellers barged into the house, staged an unwelcome and unsavoury party, and then left in the morning, hungover and wearied, leaving a mess for the rest of us to pick up.

Driving into Freiburg I saw there was a large, wooden building. It looked new. I asked my German friend what it was and she explained that it was a place that had been quickly pulled together for refugees to stay. There were a number of other similar buildings in the town. I looked at that building - just a simple, relatively cheap gesture - that spoke of what was the only decent thing to do for people that were escaping horrors and terror. I felt shame for my own country, a country that had predicated an entire departure from Europe on the basis of refugees being this verminous blight threatening to pour in through the continent. 

The predominant English mentality towards refugees, generated through a vile free press that likes to plaster the front pages with the demonising of these people, are that refugees should not be our problem. Refugees are depicted as rats, threatening our jobs and safety. 

I felt shame that this was the country I was from.

Look, don't get me wrong. I'm not here painting the rest of Europe as some glorious, holding hands, singing together haven of harmony. There are countries similarly beset by right-wing politics and loathing of refugees. Even my German host complained that the seemingly idyllic town of Freiburg where she was lived was, frankly, boring. Europe isn't perfect. But, in my opinion, we were better off in it and being a part of it than cutting ourselves off.

For one day of the trip my host gave me use of her car so I could take my family for a drive through Germany and over the border into France. We visited Strasbourg and Colmar. We drove freely across the border, despite (with our typical British sense of prudence) carrying our passports with us in case we were stopped and checked. I mean, surely we would be stopped and checked! Yet of course we were not. And we were free to drive into another country, another town, where they spoke a different language and had different customs and cultures.

Aside from one pissed-off French waiter in Colmar, I found every foreigner encountered to be congenial, polite and friendly.

Spending time with my young son, explaining to him about the place we were in, trying to teach him the basics of French and German, and I could think of nothing worse than closing his mind off to this wider world beyond our British mindset. I want my son to want to be a part of a wider world and to embrace different people, different ideas, different cultures. I want him to experience them and consider them and then make his own mind up about whether it is better or worse, good or bad. 

The German family we stayed with had a daughter of a similar age to my son. She, naturally, spoke and understood far better English than my son did of German (just another of those facets of the English; we don't generally bother to learn other languages except for in school and, once we're out, we're done with it). So they couldn't communicate, particularly. But it didn't matter. They played happily together. Football in the garden. Connect 4 on the iPad. Other games they conjured between themselves that set them off running and giggling for reasons I didn't know. It was lovely. I was proud of him.



I don't want my son to shackle himself with the siege mentality of the UK. We are a nation so sure of our superiority to the entire European Union we decided we were better off out of it. It's embarrassing. It's shameful.

I can't believe it's really happening.

When we were driving into Colmar we crossed a bridge that had flags from all manner of nations fluttering proudly along it. The Union Jack was there, a flag amongst those other nations. I looked at it and wondered how long it would stay there. And even then, at that moment, it already felt like an artifact that didn't belong - and would be one day left behind.