Isolation Is Not The Only Route

I am rather gloomy about the state of Britain. Many people are.

But I am gloomy because, yet again, this country seems to think being Eurosceptic to the point of xenophobia is a good idea, with tonight's BBC News report saying that "A tough stance on immigration is a popular one". Even though there appears to be a lack of consensus between Boris Johnson and David Cameron on the idea of an amnesty.

Shall we just pretend it isn't there then? That this is a continent that can help us? No, we should all be a bunch of cynics, apparently. Europe is bad, the EU is bad, the Euro should be made a swearword, and we shouldn't be so closely linked with what some see as a big-government super state.

That's why we're allies with the United States of America, a country that is made up of 50 separate states, spanning the width of an entire continent and several time zones: a super state, if you will, that uses the same currency in every state.

So if that "super state" is all right with us, how come the idea of another "super state" isn't? Oh, because they gave us a massive loan in the 1940's when we were bankrupt. Presumably if Europe gave us all a fiver we'd stop bashing it so much?

It seems to me - and I would like to say otherwise - that a lot of people in this country believe that any foreigner coming to this shore wanting our help is, effectively, guilty until proven innocent. Whoever it is may well be waving the white flag: but to quote Lord of the Rings, what has it got in its pocketses?

Using that example, universities shouldn't give students an offer until after they've got their results, setting back everyone's education by a full year: otherwise they risk having to admit students who didn't get exactly the right grades, which would be dreadful. So using this capping system that's being proposed, and applying it to universities, it's not how talented you are; it's how quickly you can send off your application. And even then, it would be assumed that you were only going to University to be a burden on the state and have fun at taxpayers' expense, rather than to make a benefit to society.

Oh, and it'd have to be just A Levels by the way. I mean, we couldn't have you getting an education using the International Baccalaureate, could we now? I mean, that would imply that there's an alternative to the British way of doing things, and as we know, the British always know best.

And better yet, it would mean that Oxford and Cambridge wouldn't have to waste their time on candidates whose extracurricular activities, under that sort of system, evidently count for nothing.

Doesn't sound so good in those terms, does it? How would you feel if you were told your talents didn't matter: that it was quantity, not quality? That your University constantly told you: "Well, you might want to get a degree, but frankly we believe that you only want to be here in order to waste taxpayers' money?"

If my University told me that, regardless of my degree, I would be fuming. It would be arrogance of the most toxic variety.

And if Britain wants to parade such toxic arrogance in the form of its Government, and wants to make me feel as if the only true Briton is a Eurosceptic, then I will logically conclude that my pro-European views count for nothing, and will thus take them elsewhere.

Perhaps to Germany: where not everything is perfect, I grant you. But where the trains run on time, the people are keen to learn about your culture whilst remembering theirs, and the Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has recently been re-elected despite the recession. The similarity to Cameron? She's the head of a centre-right party. The difference? She's happy to work in a coalition government.

So why can't Cameron? Is it his strong principles, or stubborn contempt for the alternative?

Because at the moment, it looks like the latter.

Chris