Strasbourg is anathema to Brexit supporters. Home to the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the European Parliament, it’s where they believe Britons are still conspired and discriminated against, and ‘bureaucrats’ devise punishments for the United Kingdom (UK) for having the temerity to leave the European Union (EU). For years they’ve portrayed it as a living hell on earth. But what’s it really like? My wife and I decided to find out.
Strasbourg’s distinctive profile
Strasbourg is about the size of Bristol. It’s in Grande Est, in eastern France. Germany is just across the Rhine which flows to the east of the city. Switzerland is to the south and Luxembourg to the northwest.
Its proximity to Germany means the city and region have been fought over and changed hands five times since 1681, three times in the last 150 years and twice in the last century. The city’s history and location helped us to a better understanding of what the Council of Europe, ECHR, the European Parliament and the EU are all about. I suspect many in the UK are not so aware.
Strasbourg has a distinctive regional architecture, cuisine and dialect. It has many of the features you expect of cities and houses the second biggest university student population in France. Yes, it has some of the problems anyone from Britain would recognise – empty shops and people, who were clearly unemployed, begging.
But the centre is pedestrianised and an extensive tram network provides cheap, easy and quiet public transport. The network extends across the Rhine to the German town of Kehl. If you want to, you can take the tram across the border for an hour or so, enjoy a beer and go back. We did. That’s what freedom of movement can do for you.
Forwards and backwards
Trams also take you out to the European quarter, where parties of young people stream in and out of the parliament building on the guided tours arranged to help them understand how it works. Building work is still taking place, creating a palpable sense of progress and of working towards a shared, peaceful future. It brings home the increasing irrelevance of the UK and how fast the country is travelling backwards.
Besides leaving the EU, the government now wants to leave the ECHR. The only other country to have done that is Belarus, a one-party state dictatorship. I found myself comparing Britain with East Germany of the 1970s and 80s – isolated, increasingly squalid and run down, with an unhappy population facing declining standards of living and held hostage by a corrupt elite propped up by Russian money. It wasn’t a nice thought.
Journey into the unknown
Why did we go, you may ask? Our 40th wedding anniversary was due, and we wanted to celebrate it somewhere interesting. Strasbourg was there, we’d never been, and we wanted to see how the EU was faring without the UK. Brexiters always claimed ‘they need us more than we need them,’ but wasn’t that just hyperbole?
It did feel like a journey into the unknown, to begin with. Horror stories of queues at ports and airports provoked nightmares. Would we be taunted by the sight of EU citizens moving smoothly across borders while we ‘Rosbifs’ queued in sullen silence? How expensive would everything be without our budget contributions? We had been practising our French, but would there be snide comments as we tried to make ourselves understood when finding our way about?
We travelled by train. Happily, Eurostar works as well as it ever did. Check-in was relatively easy (though did that French border official stare at me suspiciously or was I imagining it?). We departed on time, sped through the Tunnel and accelerated towards Paris and the Gare du Nord at speeds of over 150mph. We began to relax. It all seemed to be going terribly well.
A metaphor for Brexit
Arriving in Paris, it was a short walk to Gare de l’Est. We were looking forward to phase two of the journey. We should have known better. All mainline services from the station were delayed because of a signalling fault. Even in the EU, it seemed, system failures are not unknown. Back in the UK, we could imagine the gloating from Brexiters. Within a couple of hours, though, the fault was fixed and off we went.
Paris and Strasbourg are about 400km apart, roughly the distance between London and Newcastle. The cities are connected by Ligne à Grande Vitesse Est (LGV Est), a high-speed line that took 12 years to build, cost €6bn and has been open for more than a decade. Our double decker Train à Grande Vitesse (TGV) hurtled through the gathering evening at speeds of 200mph.
We arrived in one hour 50 minutes. Back in the UK, the quickest journey from London to Newcastle takes three hours and HS2 has been under construction for seven years. It’s half the length of the LGV Est, costs ten times as much and is years away from completion. If that isn’t a metaphor for Brexit Britain, what is?
A note of optimism
Let’s be optimistic though. First, we thoroughly enjoyed our return visit to the EU, even if it was just for a few days. Second, it’s clear that more and more people believe that Brexit was a huge mistake and returning to EU membership is an economic necessity, if nothing else. That’s particularly evident among the under 25s, none of whom could vote in 2016 and all of whom have been hardest hit by the fallout from our departure.
They are the generation who hold all the cards electorally, to coin a phrase. Though the two main parties currently reject any sort of return for political reasons, it’s unlikely to be a sustainable position, especially for Keir Starmer if and when Labour takes power.
Something will have to give. When it does, the barriers erected by the Brexiters could be swept away in another Berlin Wall moment, allowing the UK to return to the European fold. It’s an enticing prospect.
