What Boris has to do before anything else

One of the key moments I remember from politics in my twenties was when Harold Macmillan, then the aged Earl of Stockton, intervened in the miners' strike, to the rage of the Thatcher government, in a speech in the House of Lords. "This terrible strike," he called it, "by the best men in the world." Those, as he put it, who had stood up to the Kaiser and then stood up to Hitler as well.

It was electrifying partly because it was such a stark contrast with the prevailing narrative of the time.

One of the clear implications of the shock referendum vote was that it emphasised, almost beyond everything else, the need to bring the best men and women in the world in from the cold. Starting, it seems to me, by treating the result with some degree of respect.

I said in a blog, when I was still as emotionally bejiggered as everyone else, that I had a gut feeling that the future belonged to whoever could interpret and explain the result in the most liberal, open-minded way possible.

To do him credit, that is exactly what Boris Johnson did on Friday, while Tim Farron still had Jeremy Corbyn by the throat.

And a brief digression on this. I can understand, for example, why the knee-jerk reaction of the Lib Dems is to put out a campaign based on representing the 48 per cent. But I see no great future in just representing the defeated half, without understanding and incorporating some of the concerns of the winning half - especially as so many of those former Lib Dem places were very firmly for Leave (Cornwall springs to mind).

Again, if we want to go beyond the current impasse, we have to be able to discern the Liberalism amongst some of the 52 per cent as well as the 48 per cent. More on that at a later date.

I spent the weekend with rather damp camping expedition in the New Forest with two families, one of whom is part of the great multinational experiment of South London that I hailed as such a success in my book Broke.

There is hardly a street where you can't find more than a few people from Europe and beyond who have accepted our implicit invitation to make their lives in this tolerant place, and who are making a huge contribution - teaching, in the NHS, as school secretaries, holding down maybe two or three jobs each to pay the rent.

Their fears about their future this weekend have not been heard. To live up to his rhetoric, Boris needs to immediately make a commitment to them - or those who are most effective will start making plans to return over the summer, unsure what kind of nation we are about to become.

And the consequences of them departing are serious. So, say something now, Boris. History is waiting.

See my book on the Southern Railways disaster too, now on sale for £1.99 (10p goes to Railway Benefit Fund).


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