World will never be the same again
I always knew Britain would leave the EU, but I hoped they wouldn’t – now I’m left with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach
YESTERDAY afternoon, I sat on the terrace of the Café du Soleil in Vieux Lyon, the old town area of this astonishingly beautiful city, and had the salade Lyonnaise for lunch. For those of you who don’t know – and until I ordered it, I have to admit I didn’t either, because I’m not usually a salad type of guy – it’s a mountain of frisée lettuce precariously piled high with deep-fried croutons of crusty baguette and lardons of bacon, and topped with a perfectly poached vinegary egg.
As the sun beat down, and the temperature hit the high 20s, I took a look around, to the cobbled street and the tall, narrow houses built with hewn stone: some with garrets, others with railed-off roof gardens where climbing roses peeped over the metal and cascaded down the walls.
If some alien being arrived down from the distant reaches of the universe and said: ‘Show me Europe’, you could take the creature here and, in a second, point and boast, and say: ‘This is it.’
For all its faults, Europe pretty much is the most perfect place on the planet. It gave the world its greatest art, much of its most evocative literature, and the best of its laws. It was the cradle of democracy, the birthplace of civil and human rights, and a beacon for equality, even though there is much that remains to be done.
It was the birthplace of many evils, too. Colonisation, slavery and endless wars pockmark the history of the continent that also engineered the two greatest conflicts in history, conceived the abomination of the Holocaust, and created the tectonic plates of communism and capitalism that rubbed up against each other, with the threat of nuclear annihilation ever present.
AND yet, somehow, we put a halt to all that. When the European Economic Community was formed, it brought together the main continental protagonists. Later, the United Kingdom joined, on the same day as Ireland and Denmark, in 1973, and then 17 other countries followed, including ten in a big bang of solidarity in 2004.
No country, after it joined, ever went to war with another member, and Europe basked in three generations of peace and previously unthinkable prosperity.
The garden was as rosy as the rooftop of a proudly upright home in Vieux Lyon. Until yesterday. Our world never can, or will, be the same again.
In Lyon yesterday, the mood was sombre. The receptionist at my hotel has a Scottish mother, and carries British and French passports, but was deeply shocked when her English godmother phoned on Thursday to say she had voted Leave.
A group of English lads I met had decided not to talk about it at all. Essex boys all, three had voted Remain and two had voted Leave, and they agreed they would hold the post-mortem examination when they got home, lest their trip turn into an endless, fractious game of to-andfro.
The Irish here simply couldn’t believe it, but then we’re the enthusiastic Europeans, so compliant that I often think it would save a lot of bother if we held the second referendums first, since we always eventually do what is expected of us anyway, from Nice to Lisbon.
The funny thing is that the European Union is far from perfect and I wouldn’t mind seeing it reformed myself. The presidency and the Commission often seem to operate on the same planet as our alien friend above: unaccountable, didactic and dismissive.
The best way to press for reform, though, surely was to stay in. Over the decades, we have been a friend to the UK at the negotiating table and they have been a friend to us.
Our shared heritage runs much deeper than family ties based on the endless waves of emigration; it permeates everyday life too, from watching EastEnders and Corrie and supporting Leeds United or Chelsea, to listening to Muse or Elbow or Coldplay.
I love the UK, and in particular I love England. All my childhood holidays were spent shuttling between the relations in Leeds, Stockport and Coventry.
I lived in Hertfordshire for a time in the mid-Eighties and worked in Bolt Court just off Fleet Street, at that time the epicentre of Anglophone journalism, good and bad.
My sister has lived there for over 30 years. Her children, my niece and nephew, have feet in both camps, each perfectly English yet also able to wickedly produce a perfect Dublin accent at will, and happy to travel the world on passports with harps on the cover.
I console myself that none of these things will change, and yet something has changed. Sunderland sundered everything.
All my life, I have seen the United Kingdom as a standard-bearer for diversity. Even in the Sixties and Seventies, Leeds and Bradford already had settled Muslim, Hindu and Afro-Caribbean communities. At the same time, two of my uncles worked on the production line in British Leyland, and my great-uncle was employed by British Rail. Another younger cousin worked with the Red Arrows aerial display team of the RAF and I didn’t see him from the time we were kids until relatively recently, because he was advised, as a member of the British defence forces, not to travel to Ireland when the Troubles were raging.
THE European Union formed part of the framework that saw the conflict on our island end, and it funded many projects that had conciliation and progress at their very core. That’s all gone now. I spent most of yesterday with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I always knew they would leave but I hoped they wouldn’t. When the result was confirmed, it felt like a bereavement.
Our shared history, for all that was bad about it and latterly good, is just that – shared. It still will be, but on different terms.
And, tomorrow, Europe will still be here. Not just the Café du Soleil in Lyon, but Portoroz in Slovenia, and Valletta in Malta, Paphos in Cyprus, and Athens and Vilnius and Riga and Rome and Lisbon and Bratislava and, yes, London, and so many other cites I’ve visited. In each, I felt part of a family, a bigger nation than my own small one. I felt European. I felt equal.
I love Europe. I’ve always loved the European project. I’ve always thought we’re better in than out, but a small majority of our neighbours thought otherwise. They sought refuge in the ‘great’ in Great Britain, even though it doesn’t mean what they think it means, and I’m sadder than I can express.
As Queen Elizabeth memorably said in Dublin Castle: ‘We can all see things which we would wish had been done differently – or not at all.’
Yesterday’s result falls in the latter category. I wish our neighbours had not done this, but I also wish them well in their brave new world.
That’s the superficial bit. Honestly, how do I really feel?
I’m gutted.