The need for reassurance

I've posted my reflections on what needs to happen for Europeans living in Britain on my Facebook page.

It is now more than a week since I heard the referendum result whilst in the beautiful Cork town of Kinsale. My anger and disbelief clearly made me a part of the so-called metropolitan elite, though I never knew the elite had 16 million members. Yet what I really felt was that I - like perhaps three million other EU citizens living in Britain - was not just a stranger in the country I made my home 32 years ago, but that a large proportion of the people in my adopted country were giving us all a collective two fingers.

What has happened since then has done little to shake that view. I have spoken to other EU citizens living in Britain this past week, and many of them are deeply worried about their futures. Some have families here, all are massively net contributors to the UK economy. Yet not one of the people who aspire to be prime minister has said anything to reassure these people or their families about their futures. At the extreme end, we have seen vile and vicious racist attacks on community centres, and xenophobic taunts to schoolchildren and people going about their everyday business who happen not to fit into the narrow acceptability of their bigoted tormentors. And to be fair such acts have been condemned, but - aside from the statesmanship of Sadiq Khan and Nicola Sturgeon - too few would be leaders have been ready to say that those who are here and working or long term residents are here to stay, that they are valued and welcome.

Rationally, I know I probably have little to fear as an Irish citizen. The Irish government is far more actively working on behalf of the 500,000 Irish born In Britain and with far more sense of what needs to happen than any English politician seems to have shown towards those who live and work in this country, those who keep its health and education services going, those who contribute more on average to our economy that those who would tell them to go. I can get dual British citizenship and the Common Travel Area in these islands may hopefully - though who really knows - survive in some form. But emotionally that is not how it feels at all.

It is not good enough to say that three million people who have made their lives in this country will be pawns in a negotiation over Brexit, as some implied this week. After all, their lives and those of their children will be blighted by fear of the unknown for several years. They need to know that a government that disgracefully denied 2.5 million of them - we Irish did get a vote - any say in their own futures during the referendum (as well as excluding 16 and 17 year olds) has at least got their back for the future. I have yet to hear anything saying that those who work here, and whose families have a stake in this country, are not to be kicked out if the political chess game goes the wrong way in the years ahead.

We have reached this point by accident, apparently. Quite clearly few of those who created this mess seem to have expected us to leave. There is a lot that needs to happen in the years ahead to save our economy, to support Scotland and Gibraltar, to preserve an open Irish border. But let us not make pawns of so many people's lives in the process. They need to know their futures. Whoever emerges from the current political shambles has a moral duty to give them the reassurance they deserve, and to do so quickly.

Cameron's Polish friends

Timothy Garton Ash, our foremost expert on Eastern Europe, has an absolutely riveting piece in today's Guardian, setting out in forensic detail the dubious anti-semitic, homophobic background of Michal Kaminski, the Polish Law and Justice party MEP who is now the leader of Cameron's Conservatives in Brussels. As Garton Ash relates, the late 1990s and early 2000s seem to have been a particularly busy time:

In the 1990s, he was a dynamic and ambitious young activist in a rightwing, nationalist, xenophobic party, the Christian National Union. In 1999, he visited Britain to present what is described as a gorget embossed with an image of the Virgin Mary to General Augusto Pinochet. "This was the most important meeting of my whole life. Gen Pinochet was clearly moved and extremely happy with our visit," Kaminski told the BBC's Polish service. In a short video clip from July 2000, he describes homosexuals as pedaly, a slang term roughly translatable as "queers" or "poofters". In 2001, he became involved in one of Poland's greatest post-1989 historical controversies, about the murder in July 1941 of almost all the Jewish inhabitants of the Polish village of Jedwabne – a murder committed by Polish villagers. As the local MP, he denounced the post-communist president Aleksander Kwasniewski for his readiness to apologise in Poland's name for this crime.

It does rather put Cameron's lavatorial language on Absolute Radio in the shade.

Good news for Lisbon, Gloom for Dave from Ireland

As the Irish lose faith in Fianna Fail, there's good news for supporters of Europe, as the Republic's voters recognise that being in Europe is what has saved them from Iceland's fate. It looks like David Cameron will have a headache over the Lisbon Treaty if he wins the next election, after all.

Ken Clarke's return

George Osborne's gaffes have left David Cameron without a strong voice on the economy. Hence his decision to recall the Europhile former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke as shadow business secretary in place of a lacklustre Alan Duncan.

I'm sure Labour looks forward to Ken's robust advice on issues such as the value of temporarily cutting VAT - something regarded with contempt by Cameron and Osborne - and joining the Euro, reviving the good old days of Tory internecine warfare.

But in these uncertain times, we need more people of Clarke's calibre and experience to the fore. Just as Gordon Brown was right to bring back Peter Mandelson, David Cameron is right to turn to the experienced Clarke. He just shouldn't expect it to be a trouble-free appointment.

Wishful Euro-thinking

So, the dreaded Euro-Treaty has been signed. How much longer do we have to put up with Euro-sceptic fanatics forecasting the end of civilisation unless we have a referendum to stop it? Perhaps even more tedious are those Tories who imagine that the increasingly strange antics of Gisela Stuart reflect the views of the majority of the Labour Party, and that the European issue will do for Gordon Brown what the 'bastards' did to John Major. Even Fraser Nelson, whose analysis in the Spectator can sometimes be illuminating, seems to be suffering from a serious dose of wishful thinking this week.