Brexit blunders

A few months ago, Britain’s most senior ambassadors gathered in the Foreign Office to compare notes on Brexit. There was one problem in particular that they did not know how to confront. As one ambassador put it, the English–language publications in their cities (it would be rude to name them) had become rabidly anti-Brexit: keen to portray a country having a nervous and economic breakdown. Their boss, the Foreign Secretary, later summed it up: many believe that Brexit was the whole country flicking a V-sign from the white cliffs of Dover. The job of his ambassadors is to correct this awful image. But how?

Their plight has not been made much easier by the Prime Minister. Last year she gave two good speeches, in Florence and at Lancaster House, about how Britain is ready to make new allies and go global. Fine words, but they come all too rarely and, anyway, a government is judged on what it does rather than what it says. To those in the Windrush generation fearing a knock on the door from immigration police or to Czech nurses still waiting to be told if they can stay after Brexit, it will seem that a theme is emerging. That the Prime Minister’s real agenda is not to go global, but to raise the drawbridge as her country turns in on itself.

This week ought to have provided the perfect chance to cast off this image. The Commonwealth summit has been a celebration of how empire gave way to a fraternity of 53 nations, 16 of which still choose to have the Queen as head of state. The streets of Westminster have filled with delegates, many in national dress. A wonderful sight. But the newspapers they carried had news of how citizens from the Commonwealth, invited to Britain decades ago, are now being investigated and deported.