Europe is still tolerant and welcoming but it is being severely tested
ERLIN is the new London. Or so I was told when in the German capital just before the referendum. It would be especially so if we voted Leave. If we did that Germany would not just be the leading nation in Europe but Berlin would become its capital city. I smiled politely.
I like Berlin. I like the way it has married former East and West Germany into an urban whole yet not wholly merged them. I like its liberal tolerance of allcomers. I therefore admired the welcome Berlin gave to Syrian refugees fleeing through southern Europe, when a narrow-minded Brexit-panicked British Government slammed its door.
That said, I don’t for a minute believe Berlin will overtake London, whether as Europe’s commercial centre or its c ul t ur a l melt i ng pot . It lacks t he infrastructure, the epic diversity, the buzz-in-depth of London.
But being capital of anywhere brings burdens and obligations. Germany has become the destination of choice for much of the world’s refugee flows. It has lately yielded a grim harvest of atrocity, as one immigrant after another has run amok with murderous consequences, mo st l y re ce n t ly la s t we e ke n d in Ansbach.
S i mi la r at r o c i t i e s h ave af f l i c t e d Brussels, Paris and Nice, and could well afflict London. All have been random attacks on Europeans by non-native Europeans. All have turned a spotlight on the stress that immigration imposes on a booming city, in a continent that has long prided itself on its welcome to those in distress.
There is nothing that can be done to “defend” a city against the horrors of the car bomb, the crazed knife-wielder or the determined suicide attacker. The police and intelligence services must accept restraints imposed by a free society. The crowd has no protection against a madman in its midst. We cannot ban car bombs any more than we can ban guns, knives — or crowds.
The perpetrators of urban terror are mostly characterised by loneliness and a search somewhere, even if on the internet, for a friend or a cause, even a spurious “allegiance” to Islamic State. Loneliness is an affliction as old as cities, one that is beyond modern therapy to cure. The internet is newer. Sooner or later I am convinced that it must be better regulated and policed.
When we try we make London hypersafe we only make it look ridiculous and afraid. This is evident from the ugly concrete tank traps around Parliament Square to silly train announcements to “report anything suspicious to a member of staff ”. I know of no European city with more guns on di s pl ay a nd s i re ns screaming than London. Automatic weapons are toted by policemen in Tube stations, or guard the Blairs and the Camerons in their Bayswater and Notting Hill hideaways. Apart from the obscenity of such spectacles, it is like painting a bulls-eye on a target.
Almost all terror attacks, including those in Germany, reflect some ethnic or religious antagonism. As such, they feed hostility to immigration, which feeds reverse violence from immigrants themselves. German Chancellor Angela Merkel suffered a severe xenophobic backlash to her open door to Syrian refugees. Whatever the pros and cons of Br i t a i n’s E U membersh i p, pu b l i c opposition to immigration (outside