Salut!

Scruffy at Glyndebourne, a scruffy Farage defence of racists, Labour's scruffy Brexit attachment

It was a great afternoon and evening out, a relaxing walk around the gorgeous grounds of Glyndebourne before an exhilarating burst of Bizet, Carmen - first performed at the Comique Opera in Paris in 1875 but here presented by a cast wearing the clothing of 2024. I also found space at my latest Salut! Life post at Substack for one pop at Keir Starmer (his "make Brexit work" drivel appals me), another at Nigel Farage and warm praise for Killian Mbappe's call to French youth to reject extremism (by which he meant the far right) ...

Out with the old but will the new year be any better ?

Well 2023 was hardly a year to remember for good reasons. What will 2024 bring? In my piece for The National, I struggle to sound an optimistic note…. 

 

Amid the profound uncertainty, hopes and fears that dominate thoughts as Europe enters 2024, some predictions can be made with confidence and have the power to impose radical change on the continent and its way of life. 

 

Beyond reasonable doubt, the terrible suffering of Gaza, itself following the horrendous attack of October 7, will continue to cause not only deep shock but deep division across Europe. While there remains great sympathy for Israelis killed, maimed or bereaved by Hamas, millions are also appalled at a military response that seems as indiscriminate and frankly inhuman as terrorist atrocities. These divisions are sure to assume increasing prominence. 

Rishi, Boris, Keir etc: those wacky Brexit positions in full

Understanding Brexit and all the different positions people take on this most important subject can be tricky. Here is a cut-out-and-keep guide 

 

With renewed thanks to the Danish cartoonist Jens Hage 

Salut!’s Christmas Day message: glad tidings amid the gloom

 

Today is a day to be enjoyed.

And Salut! hopes its small band of readers - the folk music site Salut! Live gets many, many more and might even entertain you - have a great Christmas Day.

My pal Pete Sixsmith foregoes Sunderland games each Christmas to show there is professional life after a teaching career 

 

There are things we can try to forget for one day.

Forget the attacks ministers and media cheerleaders have made on ordinary people, most of them performing important duties of behalf of everyone, for attempting to defend or improve working conditions and negotiate fairer pay.

Forget, if we can for a day, Putin and his squalid invasion, a Hitleresque adventure he crazily justifies as countering neo-Nazis in Ukraine.

Forget the incompetence, misconduct and dubious relationship with the truth that have characterised a good part of the Tories’ 12 years in power. The Government’s default disclaimer - ´´global headwinds’´, ie the pandemic and war - diverts blame from its own failures and the role of Brexit, which makes every problem others face that much worse for the UK.

Forget Sir Keir Starmer’s ploy of pretending the stench of Brexit can somehow be turned by his magic wand into the sweetest of scents. 

Actually, don’t forget and certainly don’t forgive any of that.

But do try to make the most of the festive season, notably today and the New Year revelries. And remember the good things: the flawed wonder that is the NHS and its magnificent staff, people in public and other essential services, volunteers at homeless refuges and food banks, all those giving their time, effort, skills and sometimes their lives to make the world a better place.

Salut! wishes you all a happy Christmas and the best the new year can bring.

 

A magnet for the French in London becomes another casualty of Brexit

On social media, I get quite cross about Brexit.

 

'Spot-on', my fellow-Remoaners say; 'pompous, condescending' is the harsher Brexiter verdict.

 

I aim for greater objectivity when writing for The National and other publications. But if it is a piece for Comment pages, I am naturally allowed to express or imply an opinion... like here

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lured by Beatlemania and tantalising images of Swinging London, young French people looking for new experiences began flocking to the UK in the 1960s.

 

Many of those travelling to the capital wanted to stay. Needing help with accommodation, jobs or study opportunities, they headed for the bustling West End and the Charles Peguy centre.

 

Now, after six decades of assisting French people trying to find their feet in a new country, the centre has closed. It is another casualty of Brexit.

While the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has also played a small part, the causes for closure lie principally with the hard Brexit Britain chose as its departure route from the EU.

 

A mischievous caricature of Leave supporters shows obsessively flag-waving Little Englanders thriving on conflict with foreigners, especially the French.

 

While this is an exaggeration, it is unlikely that the staunchest “go it alone without Europe” advocates will shed tears over the centre’s demise.

In place of the entente cordiale, the famous accord signed in 1904 with the aim of fostering smoother Anglo-French relations, there is now mutual distrust.

 

Francoise Hardy did rather a lot for the entente cordiale in the 1960s. She hated 'Tous les Garcons ..." but was quite pleased with this

 

 

Prime Minister Boris Johnson may be on his way out of 10 Downing Street but his government has picked fight after fight with France, the triggers ranging from fishing rights and immigration to the horrendous delays seen at Dover as holidaymakers try to cross the English Channel to Calais. Ministers claim, often without justification, that it’s all the fault of France or the EU. In the golf club analogy that is commonly used, Paris and Brussels say Britain acts as if it thinks cancelling membership should not stop it playing whenever it wishes.

 

Brexit’s opponents insist that for all the promises of “sunlit uplands” for a Global Britain freed from EU shackles, there is little sign of benefit and ample evidence of loss.

 

Persistent claims that leaving the EU facilitated the UK National Health Service’s successful coronavirus vaccination programme are in dispute.

Membership of the EU encouraged but did not oblige a collective response to the virus. In any case, neighbouring countries quickly caught up after a sluggish start.

 

The Anglo-EU row over the so-called Northern Ireland protocol, designed to protect Ireland from a hard border that would almost certainly threaten a fragile peace, has already led to the withdrawal of European funding for UK scientific research.

 

The UK has admitted its actions would involve a “specific and limited” breach of international law, reneging on a deal freely signed with the EU and acclaimed by Mr Johnson. While Brussels fumes, Britain accuses the EU of intransigence for failing to agree on a protocol rewritten to suit London (and the minority among Northern Ireland voters who backed Leave).

See how it appears at The National (which consents to the reproduction of my work at Salut!: https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2022/07/29/a-pillar-of-anglo-french-ties-has-become-yet-another-casualty-of-brexit/

 

“Blame Brexit” has become a cliche of everyday life. UK exporters and importers deplore the added bureaucracy, delays and costs of continuing to trade with a massive neighbouring bloc. Aviation, agriculture and hospitality say ending freedom of movement has caused severe labour shortages. Whitehall either minimises the disruption or denies responsibility.

 

Britain has dropped out of the Erasmus programme that enabled a two-way traffic of students funded for academic exchanges. The replacement Turing scheme is one-way and excludes potentially crippling tuition fees.

 

Some Brexiters now say they always knew it would take time, perhaps decades, for gains to appear. Sovereignty, they say, was the paramount issue. Whether such a nuanced justification was properly explained to, or understood by, the narrow majority that voted Leave in the 2016 referendum is open to doubt.

 

All of which leaves the Charles Peguy centre as just another example of the collateral damage caused by a bitter political and cultural divorce.

Peguy was a young French poet and writer, killed in battle in the First World War. One of his works, The Portico of the Mystery of the Second Virtue was a favourite poem of Charles de Gaulle, who was to become the enduring symbol of French resistance in the Second World War and subsequently the country’s president.

 

Since opening in 1964, the centre named after him has advised tens of thousands of French visitors, mostly young, to London.

 

My wife and her best friend from school in provincial France, having worked as au pairs in northern England but wishing to settle for a while in London, went there for help in locating affordable accommodation. “All the French students coming to Britain knew of the Charles Peguy centre and we all gravitated towards it,” my wife recalls.

 

But the centre is now counted among what French Morning News London, an online source of news and information for French expatriates, calls the “heavy consequences” of Brexit.

 

“Covid stopped people travelling but now that’s more or less back to normal,” says Thibault Dufresne, director of the Centre for International Exchanges in France, which had run the London centre since the 1980s. “But sadly the impact of Brexit that has forced closure.

 

“London, the UK, used to be very attractive to young French people who wanted to gain experience of work and learn the language.

 

“With an identity card and the UK being next door, it was so easy. You could find a job in 24 hours and quickly move on to something better. Now that they need sponsorships and visas, it has become almost impossible for most.

 

“We held back on a decision for a couple for years hoping there might be some easing of restrictions, maybe to allow young people to come for six months or a year. But it hasn’t happened.

 

“It’s been a great adventure since 1964. The centre was the place to go for French speakers in London and we’re very sad that it has come to end.”

 

The beneficiary of Britain’s flagging appeal to Europe’s youth is Ireland, still in the EU, still participating in Erasmus and still offering freedom of movement. It is difficult to escape the thought that London – the city that Mr Johnson as its mayor acclaimed as a model of cosmopolitan harmony – has lost part of its soul.

 

Lord Frost acclaims the honoured Brexit heroes. Is folk music the antidote?

In due course, this post will be about tempting you to explore the pages of my music site, Salut! Live

 

 

The new year begins with Lord Frost of Brexit loudly cheering, and welcoming honours for, the negotiating team that brought us what Boris called his amazing oven-ready deal, leaving the rest of us to suffer the predictable and predicted consequences of the worst act of national self-harm in living memory. One that the unelected Lord Frost saw for what it was when actually involved in a business sector - whisky - that earned export money.

But I shall refrain from naming the guilty individuals and can but guess at what turned the heads of this esteemed peer and that other born-again Brexiter, Liz Truss.

 

A Middleton banquet chez Lord & Lady Brexit as royals invade Bormes-les-Mimosas

 

 

 

 

Once I'd turned my back, the royals arrived. Wills and Kate, their three children, her sister Pippa and their parents, all present in the beautiful village of Bormes-les-Mimosas for the wedding of the Middleton brother James to his French fiancée, Alizée Thevenet, at the little town hall a mile or so up the road from us.

Then it was on to Chateau Léoube, set in a glorious vineyard on the coast and offering a stunning private beach. Plenty of Léoube's vaunted rosé wine was reportedly quaffed by guests. Our invitations, it seems, were lost in the post.

 

On Brexit, the entente cordiale and becoming French

 

First things first. I did not decide to seek French nationality (in addition to, not in place of, British citizenship) solely because of Brexit. As my article (below) for The National explains, there were other compelling reasons that date from half a century ago.

But Brexit, a monstrous project that has already brought a stream of bad news and will doubtless go on doing so, finally pushed me to go for it. My thanks to the editor of The National for consenting to republication at Salut! of my work for the paper.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seizing an opportunity between lockdowns last year, I had brought another long stay in France to a close and returned to London as a Briton. After several months in the UK, I have now made the opposite journey as a French citizen.

There is nothing too dramatic about this change of status. No one has stripped me of the nationality of my birth. As the official at the French consulate in London put it – when she presented my declaration of French nationality and warned me to "guard it carefully" – I am still British.

What dual nationality means, in selfish practical terms, is that I am once again free to roam the 27 EU countries at will. I can live in France without worrying how long I stay and how long I must then stay away from all EU territory before being permitted to return.

But it naturally goes deeper than an embittered personal rejection of Brexit. My acquisition of French nationality has a gold-plated finish, secured by coincidence rather than design in the same year that my French wife and I celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary.

It is not a step that ever occurred to me as a product of small-town northern England, where youthful awareness of France was limited to wallowing in the cloying melancholy of Francoise Hardy’s songs and ruing a family budget that put a school trip to Paris out of the question.

In an adulthood spent nipping between the two countries and living and working in both, an unmistakable connection to France has developed. Given my close attachment to the French side of my extended family, the wonder is that I did not cross the bridge years ago.

People have all sorts of reasons for possessing, and often treasuring, double nationality, or for seeking it in later years. For many, perhaps most, sentiment is more important than mere convenience. The Patricks and Siobhans born of Irish parents in Britain and other English-speaking parts of the world are likely to grow up feeling at least as Irish as anything else. Karim or Rachida, in their Parisian banlieue or provincial French town, will cling fiercely to Algerian roots.

To an open mind, it is surely the most natural and respectable of expressions of individual identity. Logically, problems should arise only in those rare cases where allegiances born of dual citizenship assume the combative edge, and even hatred of host countries, that can lead to extremist thoughts or acts.

Not everyone, of course, sees the innocence in, for example, preferring the culture or football team of a parent’s geographical origins to those of country of birth and upbringing.

In 1990, Norman Tebbit, an early populist of the British right who served as chairman of the Conservative party and at several ministries, devised what became known as the "Tebbit test". He argued that, which cricket team people from ethnic minorities supported was a barometer of whether they were “truly British”; a “large proportion of Britain's Asian population” would fail the test, he told the Los Angeles Times.

If that seems an absurdly harsh condition of Britishness, consider the spluttering outrage caused when the French anthem La Marseillaise was roundly jeered by a few hundred Tunisian supporters before a France-Tunisia football match in 2008. From the right of French politics, then president Nicolas Sarkozy led a chorus of indignation that would not have sounded out of place in a pantomime. He even spoke of the need to abandon games in such circumstances and, neatly overlooking the likelihood that most of those barracking the anthem were born in France, suspend future fixtures with the countries concerned.

It may be just as well that England face Germany and not France in the last 16 of the European Football Championship. I would no more boo an anthem than players taking the knee, but divided loyalty might have caused me to fail the Tebbit test.

The climax to the process of obtaining French nationality takes different forms. An online report of such an occasion in south-western France tells of people from nearly 40 different countries singing La Marseillaise together, led by the mayor, and in some cases making short speeches.

An acquaintance recalls another group ceremony, with pre-Covid-19 celebrations at the same London consulate where I sat, socially distanced by a Perspex screen, and discussed the formalities of my gesture with a solitary official. In the dossier, the official handed me a friendly if impersonal letter from President Emmanuel Macron describing France as "proud and happy" to welcome me as a new citizen.

Did I step from the building feeling more French than an hour or so earlier? A little. Less British? Not really; Brexit had already posed a stiff enough test to my sense of national identity. And I still feel more saddened by the outcome of the 2016 referendum than alienated from all those who voted Leave. The impulses of a majority of them had little to do with xenophobia or outright racism and everything to do with a belief – nonsensical as I find it – that "throwing off the shackles of the EU" would smoothly lead to the "Sunlit Uplands", which campaigners had promised. Remainers and Leavers will forever disagree on whether those with uglier motivations were numerous enough to swing the result.

At one of those huge and entirely futile anti-Brexit demonstrations in London, I spotted a banner held by another dual national. Adapted to refer to France and not Belgium, the slogan sums up my feelings precisely: "Fifty per cent British, 50 per cent French, 100 per cent European."

 

 

'Brexit is the plague that will still be infecting Britain when Covid has gone. It spreads unnoticed because neither government nor opposition shows the smallest interest in finding a vaccine. The public doesn’t blame them because it is sick of hearing about the sickness. I understand why. I am sick of writing about it. But given that the Labour party won’t hold our leaders to account, it remains a matter of democratic propriety to remind voters that the Brexit movement lied to them.' - Nick Cohen, The Observer 

 

Snatches of the inside story of De Gaulle's Non. A thinking Leaver's essay

Bob Cowan is an exceptional journalist. We worked together at The Daily Telegraph and in Abu Dhabi. He proves my own point that not all Brexiters are essentially dim, foreigner-hating Little Englanders oblivious to the economic and social damage they're inflicting.

This is a powerful defence of Leave. I cannot challenge his specific examples of supposed EU malfaisance but certainly feel Bob takes an implausibly optimistic view of the coming turmoil, the UK's alternative trade prospects and Brexit's appalling social impact. He does not defend or even mention the Government's shameful willingness to break international law.

But that is neither here nor there; I invited replies from Leavers to a Facebook comment I posted and this is Bob's well-argued response, accompanied by delicious references to the French side of Bob's family and its understanding of the De Gaulle outlook on Britain and Europe.

The beers will be on him if lockdown allows once I am back in Brexit-blighted Blighty and done with the Boris quarantine ...

I saw your Facebook post about Leavers staying mute and was more than a little provoked (and didn’t think it fair for your legions of followers to have to read an overlengthy diatribe on your pages).

So… my reasons for twice voting Leave. They fall into two distinct arguments, neither of which has anything to do with immigration. Most people – and certainly every Brexiteer I have spoken to in London – understand that in the era of international flights costing so little, the mass movement of people is now a fact of everyday life. All Brexit will do is change the nationalities of the immigrants not alter their numbers.

Before explaining my reasoning for believing we should never have joined the EEC, as it was, a little personal history.

One of my uncles was a senior French general and member of De Gaulle’s war cabinet. He was sacked for granting the Americans two airbases in Equatorial French Africa, despite the fact that this “treachery” had been an attempt to persuade Roosevelt to back De Gaulle rather than Giraud, whom the Yanks preferred.

The General must have felt some post-war remorse because on his return to power with the Fifth republic he appointed another of the family to his cabinet (minister for mines, if I remember rightly).

The point of all this is that I earwigged a conversation between my father and my cousin shortly after De Gaulle’s infamous Non. He explained that while ostensibly it was to do with the Common Agricultural Policy (De Gaulle could see that Britain’s joining would threaten not only French agriculture but its highly subsidised rural economy), the more fundamental reason was to do with national outlook.

France and Germany had created a mutually beneficial alliance that allowed each to dominate its own preferred spheres inside a 20th century version of Napoleon’s Fortress Europe: Germany industrial and economic; France cultural and diplomatic.

Britain not only threatened those spheres, De Gaulle thought, but had historically always been opposed to all notions of Fortress Europe. In short, we looked outwards to the world. The Six looked inwards. Britain and Europe, in De Gaulle’s view, were completely incompatible. And he couldn’t stand Anglo-Saxons anyway!

Even as a kid, I thought his reasoning was probably right.  Continental countries necessarily must closely watch their borders and their neighbours. Island Britain, by contrast, has always been looking to the horizon for trading opportunities.  So a fundamental group of reasons for opposing the EEC and its successors has been their trade policies.

I believe in free trade, Europe does not. I don’t accept that because Brazil grows coffee beans for a fraction of the price that they can be grown in Britain (or anywhere else in Europe, come to that) they should have tariffs slapped on them. But they do. 

I think it verging on the criminal that Europe should apply both subsidies and tariffs on items such as sugar-beet. The consequence has been that tens of thousands of small farmers across Africa and the Third World who once grew cane for the export market have had any opportunity for betterment taken from them.

And not just sugar.  It’s almost impossible to tour East Africa without seeing broken down mills and factories on the fringes of every town. All closed as a consequence of European tariffs. And to rub salt into their wounds, they then find themselves receiving as “food aid” the stuff they used to grow and sell.

It’s the same for pretty well every commodity, whether agricultural, industrial or commercial.  Hardly surprising, then, that the EU has so few trade agreements with our competitors on the world markets. I could bang on endlessly about the iniquitous trade policies of Europe. But the absolutely fundamental reason for my desire to be free of the EU is its wretchedly undemocratic constitution.

As you know, it is the only governmental system on the planet that has four main branches.

There is the European Council, which is supposedly the supreme executive authority. However as it is composed of the heads of government of the member states, the amount of time they give to running the EU is limited to the extent of being virtually non-existent. Then there is the European Parliament. The only actual democratic bit of the whole set up. But its powers of scrutiny, of veto, of even formulating and implementing legislation are highly restricted. There is the judiciary, the European Court, consisting of one judge from every member state. OK, I guess, when it comes to sorting out administrative disputes but hardly conducive to establishing a corpus, an identity or a unique tradition of jurisprudence.

And then the European Commission. An executive and a civil service combined into one. It formulates policy and implements it. It is the only body that can propose legislation. Not only that, it also polices itself (or rather doesn’t: the accounts haven’t been signed off since 1994). With one exception it is entirely unelected and recruits its officials largely from its own educational institutions.  The only “election” is of the President, who is nominated by the Council and approved by ballot of the Parliament. Its one abiding philosophy is the perpetuation of the EU and its government system leading (it hopes) ultimately to a United States of Europe, despite the fact that the people of Europe when polled have consistently said they don’t want such a thing.  If such a constitution had ever been attempted here, or in the US, or any other of the anglosphere nations, it would have led ultimately to civil war. We don’t like being told what to do by unelected officials. We like to hold governments to account. We loathe secret agendas.

Enough of the negative (though if you wanted more, I could go on… and on… and on).

What about the positives of the EU? What are we giving up? Well, there’s the freedom to live and work in any member state. Which, to my mind, is about the only real benefit we shall have tjo forgo. Once we are properly out, Brits wanting to live and work abroad will probably have to get work permits and, depending on the country, residential visas too. A pain in the bum, I admit, but we’ve all done it. And you certainly – and quickly – learn how a country works by dealing with its internal bureaucracy.

What else? I can’t see travel being affected much. I visited France, Germany and Italy before we joined, and again afterwards. I don’t recall there being any difference at arrival. The only time I can remember crossing a border and not having to show a passport was driving from Ostend to Amsterdam.

Are we suddenly going to lose all our rights built up over the centuries? No. Are our courts going to disappear? No. What are we going to lose? I don’t know. Maybe the EU at some future date will implement a piece of legislation that makes its citizens’ lives that bit easier or more pleasant. What’s to stop us following suit? Absolutely nothing. And vice-versa, of course.

Obviously there is going to be a degree of turmoil over trade next year, and there are bound to be hand-wringing headlines, but how much impact and for how long? I wouldn’t have thought a great deal. With so much depending on moving commodities between nations, it’s in everyone’s interests – particularly big business's – to smooth it out as quickly and efficiently as possible.

I guess there’s a good chance that Ulster might be persuaded that it’s really part of the island of Ireland after all and form some kind of Irish federation with the south. But would that really be such a bad thing? It would solve a lot of problems...

The greatest risk, I would have thought, would be to the EU itself. If we thrive and demonstrate that to be successful in a globally-connected world you don’t need all the restrictions that are the hallmark of the EU, that could be quite a lure for the less-committed nations. Who knows, it might even force a re-think of how a European Union should be constituted and run. Maybe we could even be asked to re-join the reformed Europe!

• Bob Cowan is a former Evening Standard, Times and Telegraph journalist now retired and living in East London, where he was born and brought up.

Stand up and be counted of you're a thinking Leaver (I never claimed they didn't exist)

Well Liz Truss has already delivered (not very convincingly), just four years+ since the referendum and Leavers' promises of new trade deals galore and an easy agreement with the EU. Perhaps Private Eye's brilliant cover sums up their hopes

 

A friend remarked a little while ago that Salut! seemed to be a forum for thoughtful, reasoned debate free of the sheer nastiness that detracts from the obvious values of social media. Well, sometimes maybe. Most of the time we struggle to attract readers, let alone ones willing to debate. But we keep going, in part because every so often interest explodes, bringing in hundreds of visitors and loads of interesting comments.

 

At Facebook,  where it's easier to stimulate discussion, I posted what you see below. For the record, I never - except in banter - allege that all Leave voters were thick, selfish, leaning (or worse) towards the far right and, if not simply racist, xenophobic by nature. What I do claim is that if you remove the pro-Brexit  votes of those fitting all or part of that description, Remain would have won.

 

What I repeat here is very short and will be followed by a much more substantial pro-Leave analysis from a valued former colleague with whom I naturally disagree but who fits no part of the description above of another sort of Brexiter.

 

There are other points of view and dozens of people took the trouble to respond. See them all at this Facebook link; I may get round to reproducing a selection in Comments at the follow-up piece mentioned in the last paragraph. As for those seeing this for the first time, why not get involved, here or at https://www.francesalut.com/2020/09/stand-up-and-be-counted-if-youre-a-thinking-leaver-2.html ?...