FIDELMA COOK

AND lo, a star appeared in the East … Well, in the Palace of Westminster, tonight as I write. For the first time, for those of us adrift in the continent of Europe, there is a glimmer, a tiny blink of hope that some politicians have put country before party.

And, as if awoken from a long slumber under the spell of the “will of the people”, they have remembered the others … the so-called Remainers.

By the slenderest, admittedly, of votes they returned true sovereignty to Parliament and denied those who would have ridden roughshod over it. Of course it may be just a brief light, which, with the cynical manoeuvrings and promises of power, could be quickly snuffed out.

But it has, at least, produced the hope that out of the madness of the dash to the cliff edge, decent politicians have called a halt.

Let me try to explain even to hardcore Brexiteers what it has been like.

There has been a peculiar feeling of shame combined with deep embarrassment when watching the twists and turns of May’s Brexit.

God knows it’s bad enough for those of you living in the UK but for the 1.2million Britons settled in Europe it’s both excruciating and frightening.

There is no point in going over the stupidity and ignorance of the whole Brexit folly. If you cannot see this then stop reading now, for I have no energy left to explain, and would prefer to lick and eat my crumbling French mud-brick walls than try.

Thanks, again, to social media I know I am not alone in my despair; not alone in watching, in disbelief, politicians lie and lie over and over, even when faced with evidence of earlier statements.

I am not alone in listening to the measured words of the EU negotiators who have more care and concern for the potentially dispossessed holders of UK passports than their own government does.

Of course all politicians are at times economical with the truth but few in recent times have been such barefaced dissemblers; giggling like David Davis when faced with their untruths.

As in everything, when away from the heart of the action, it is hard to grasp the nuances, hard to tease out the undertones and subtleties that form the currents of a nation’s flow. For we too are foreigners now in looking back.

And so we are left often with the broad brush strokes from online news or our Sky boxes.

Increasingly, and it hurts me to say this, the once proud media I defended with every bone in my body has become, in far too many instances, hysterical click-bait for the kneejerking masses.

Pundits now proudly nail their colours to the tattered masts of their editors or companies, and care not a jot for the intellectual rigour of presenting a lucid debate without prejudice. They care little for upholding the values of our trade that above all should seek to examine with an impersonal gaze and expose the underbelly of every argument.

I accept I too am nailing my colours to a mast – that of a united Europe – but then I don’t also wear the hat of political correspondent, which many of these people do. I no longer serve any master but I hope that when I did I still always preserved my integrity.

I suppose I just wear the old school cap of courteous respect while pushing for answers unlike, shall we say, Sky’s Adam Boulton. When political journalists started to believe their own publicity and became personalities, they began to shrivel and rot, their need to push their own opinions crowding out the answers of their interviewees and making them deaf to the absurdities of the responses.

Forgive me. Yes, this has turned into a rant. I have become heart sick and heart sore at watching the dismantling of all I’ve held dear in pursuit of … of what? What?

Although I know my Irish passport will protect me on many levels, I take no pleasure from reading the European newspapers. Yet, unlike the UK’s there is, you may be surprised to know, no glee in watching the sun go down on the last vestiges of a nation once respected and even admired for its diplomacy.

What initially came across was a bewildered sadness, a sense of loss, and incomprehension of how it all happened. Now, but only with a major twist or turn of the negotiations, there is the occasional, beautifully, rightly, cold examination of, yes, the facts.

It is too early to see how they will treat this vote. But more and more the European media have moved on. The UK diminishes daily and has, if all continues down this path, no future in our dynamic fusion of countries.

Increasingly here the main stories focus on the ones the UK seems to be leaving behind: those who’ve lived and worked and enjoyed a Europe without boundaries.

I believe it’s never all over until the fat lady sings – even if she’s warming up in the wings. I still therefore do not believe all this is yet over.

In fact, after today I think she may be back in her dressing room.

The fat lady has yet to sing over Brexit. There is a glimmer of hope