Ten Commandments for Brexit

I saw a tweet today from a finance company. "Ready for Brexit? Our ten-point checklist will help you get prepared. Act now to get the financial guidance you need. #LetsTalkBusiness." I retweeted it with a comment of my own. "Ready for Brexit? Nope. Are emotional and spiritual guidance on offer too?" No answer as yet. I wait in hope.

But while I wait, I'm thinking how important it is to cross this threshold with self-awareness and insight. Readers of my blog will know that I'm a Remain ultra. I believe that voting for Brexit was a terrible mistake for the nation to make. I think it is bound to have all kinds of consequences, mostly unforeseen, for the United Kingdom, not least the union of our four peoples. I can't see that any Brexit deal will benefit Britain as much as our present EU membership does. (And I write in North East England, destined to suffer the worst impact of any part of the UK in terms of its economy, manufacturing industry and employment.)

Nevertheless, I am realistic enough to recognise that Brexit is bound to happen with or without a deal whether it's in a week's time, a month's time or some time in the future. And while a big part of me will only be dragged kicking and screaming out of the European Union, a voice within tells me to get ready to leave as gracefully as I can. Not necessarily going gently into that not-so-good night, but at least trying to recognise that generosity is needed. It’s going to be hard. I'm addressing this blog to myself to begin with, and then to fellow Remainers who like me feel the pain of Brexit and yet want to go on living as good citizens, making the best of what seems like a thoroughly bad job.

So here's my answer to the question in my tweet. A ten-point checklist to help us get prepared emotionally, morally, spiritually. Ten Commandments for Brexit, if you like. #LetsTalkWisdom.

1 Understand the pain of loss.
Emotional intelligence is important here. For many of us, Brexit is a loss of identity and belonging the like of which we probably haven't experienced in our nation's life before. If you're like me you'll feel this loss in a surprisingly personal way. This is about me as well as us. So we should expect to experience the normal symptoms of bereavement such as denial, bewilderment, emptiness, anger, bargaining, depression - and maybe only much later, acceptance and resolution. The effects of Brexit on mental health have already been noted by some psychotherapists. We simply need to notice what we are going through, and be honest about it, at least with ourselves.

2 Don't feed anger and bitterness. Try to be positive.
Yes, we were lied to in the referendum campaign. This hasn't stopped since then. Inevitably we feel that the Brexit result, so finely balanced, was based on a false prospectus fed by the right-wing media. But there's nothing to be gained by nursing hurt feelings, still less by badmouthing those who misled the nation or colluded with them. We need to find healing in our nation if we are to have a future worth living for. Being positive can begin by celebrating the years we enjoyed EU membership and all the benefits it brought. Yes, we are sad beyond words to be leaving. We heartily wish we weren't. We are angry about it and are right to be. But we can resolve not to indulge in vengeful self-pity. Even in hard times, we can cultivate thankfulness. Let the power of grateful memory shed light on the way we navigate our path through this dark time of loss and grief.

3 Treat Brexiters with courtesy.
Loving my neighbour as myself is one of the two great precepts of the Torah, reiterated by Jesus in the gospels. We need to work hard at our relationships with Brexiters, and with former Remainers who have gone along with, even supported, the government's attempts to "get Brexit done". However much we may have been abused by Brexit campaigners, however easy it might have been to give back in kind, we should not compromise on respect and courtesy towards those with whom we profoundly disagree. Perhaps there are individuals to whom we need to say that we're sorry, and with whom we should try to be reconciled. It's beneath our self-respect to treat others with contempt and nurse our hatred. In a divided nation, dignity (= "worth") has been at stake during these past three years. Let's cultivate peace and friendship where we can. Let’s try to help one another speak our truth with gracefulness. And if Brexit unravels, let’s not crow "I told you so!"

4 Remain European in heart and mind.
Let's use language accurately. We are leaving the European Union but we are not leaving Europe. It matters that we go on thinking of ourselves as Europeans, and that this should continue to be a core part of our identity as British people. To be fair to Brexiters, this is a point many of them have been at pains to underline. Whatever our nation's political alignments in the future, nothing can rob us of being geographically, intellectually, culturally and spiritually at the heart of our continent. "No man is an island entire of itself." We are "part of the main". We need to affirm this ever more strongly after Brexit. Travel in Europe if you can; if not, travel in your mind and heart. We are Europeans, and always shall be.

5 Befriend EU nationals living and working in Britain.
There's a particular need right now to embrace the so-called "Three Million" from EU countries who are living among us in this country. Many of them continue to suffer great anxiety about their future, whether their application for residence in Britain will be granted, what their prospects for employment are. (And let's remember that British people resident in overseas EU countries are just as worried about the uncertainties they face, including the elderly who can't afford to move back to the UK but face big questions about their pensions and health care.) This of course is only part of our hospitality to and care for all who live among us who come from other parts of the world. We must use our imaginations and offer help and support where we can.

6 Keep the conversation about Europe alive.
Remainers are often told to take Brexit on the chin and move on. But it's wishful thinking to imagine that the debate about the EU will end on Brexit Day. On the contrary. Negotiating our future relationship with the EU, and reaching trade deals will take many years. This will guarantee that the EU will remain on the national agenda and in its consciousness for a long time to come. And I'm certain that our children's generation, frustrated beyond measure by the actions of their Brexiter parents in denying them the future they had taken for granted until 2016, will one day reopen the question of EU membership. This may happen sooner than we think. We should encourage them. We should support pro-European politicians and policies. Democracy is a conversation that never stops. There's nothing once-for-all about Brexit.

7 Challenge fake news about the European Union.
The rhetoric of the far right will continue to trumpet "taking back control" and play down the intangible benefits of EU membership such as promoting human rights and the rights of working people, sharing in the project of peace-building across the continent, collaborating in our response to the climate emergency, working together on programmes to tackle crime, slavery, trafficking, sexual exploitation and maintaining security. As good Europeans we must go on championing the EU's efforts to build a better world not just for its twenty-seven nations but for all human beings. That means challenging the lies and half-truths that will continue to bolster those who try to demonstrate how Brexit has been the salvation of Britain. The case for the EU still needs to be made, even if, for now, we shall have to help make it as fellow-travellers rather than citizen-members.

8 Play your part to make sure that Britain remains an outward-looking country.
The referendum mantra, "what's best for Britain" was an invitation to indulge the worst of self-serving attitudes. To love our neighbour means to look for the welfare of others as well as ourselves, or as the Golden Rule says, to do for them what we would want them to do for us. In the reciprocity of mutual service and self-giving lies our flourishing. What's best for us turns out to be what's best for others too. The nations of the United Kingdom, the European Union and the Commonwealth understand this mutuality and attempt to live by it, even if the reality falls short of the aspiration. Given the environmental and geopolitical threats we face, our race only has a future if we cultivate the love of neighbour among the world's peoples. To become insular, as we risk doing because of Brexit, would be to walk away from the global responsibility our nation has historically understood to belong to its vocation. EU membership was a test of our capacity to look beyond our borders to the welfare of other peoples and, ultimately, to the flourishing of the human family. It would be the death of this humane, fair-minded, civilised country if we abandoned that large and generous vision for the world and looked only to the interests of our own people.

9 Don't be nostalgic. Live in the present.
We can't know what life will be like once we've crossed the Brexit threshold. In these days of the so-called end-game, it may feel like going into a kind of exile. Nostalgia is literally, aching for home. Exiles wouldn't be human if they didn't experience it. But when Jeremiah tried to help his people make a good exile far from their homeland, he told them to invest in their present, not the past. "Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce...Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare" (Jeremiah 29.1-7). This should be our attitude for the years we shall live on Brexit Island, be they many or few. Investing in the present opens us to its possibilities. We learn to live, not out of regret for the past but attentive to the here and now. We are always the better for doing that.

10 Don't lose heart. And say your prayers.
I think this is the most important principle of them all. Brexit may have driven us to the brink of desperation, but we refuse to give up hope. What God means by this cataclysm that has overtaken our nation only he knows. It's beyond our understanding. But we mustn't succumb to despair. So we say our prayers for the family of humanity, for our European friends and neighbours, for our nation and for ourselves. We are not expecting God to save us from ourselves and the consequences of our decisions. But prayer affirms that God has not abandoned his world. To pray is to stand in hope and solidarity with the world in all its suffering and to ask what its healing and flourishing would mean. And then to commit ourselves to whatever actions arise from our having glimpsed our human condition from a larger and deeper perspective. Contributing towards a better, more wholesome politics in our nation is one way. "What matters for prayer is what we do next." That's how to keep the flame of hope burning and not lose heart.

Northumbrians: a personal take on a new book

On 5 May 1973 my wife and I became engaged. That was the day Sunderland won the Cup Final. My wife's parents were ardent Black Cat supporters. We figured that if Sunderland were to win, her father would say yes to anything, and if they lost he'd be past caring. 

Reader, I married her. And married into her North East family. Her father was from Consett, her mother from Wearside. They hadn't lived in the North East since the war. When I arrived on the scene, they had retired to the Yorkshire Dales. But the region was in their blood. My initiation into North East culture included being presented to the family matriarch who lived in Sunderland and of whom everyone seemed in awe, and an evening drinking in a well-known watering hole just down the road where the only females to be seen were serving behind the bar. (Brown ale, you ask? I'm not saying. It would be a cliché too far.)

To a young Londoner it was all very strange, even exotic. I'd only visited the North East once before, as a schoolboy applying to Durham University to read maths. I've never forgotten the November afternoon I got out of the train at Durham station. It was bleak and grey, the kind of day the North East does so well. Above the rooftops huddled below I took in the apparition of the Castle and Cathedral not, it seemed as the light began to fade, anchored to the bedrock of their acropolis but floating ethereally above. I walked through the darkening streets up to the Castle where I was to spend the night before my interview. I wondered how I had come to be so far from home. Did it cross my mind that one day this would be my home? Not for a moment. I didn't go to Durham University in the end. But the seed of my fascination with northernness had been sown.

A decade later, we were living in rural north Northumberland. That repeated north I found to be both romantic and unsettling. I'd become Vicar of Alnwick. It was my first incumbency. I came to love the place and its people, and to cherish the memory of the ancient Christianity that flourished in Saxon times thanks to the Northumbrian saints like Oswald and Aidan, Cuthbert and Hild. But I won't deny that living and working in a northern country market town posed challenges to a young vicar brought up in the metropolitan suburbs of north London. Was this because any small town was inevitably a more self-contained world? The empty landscapes were sublimely beautiful, but their silence and remoteness could feel unnerving at times. Or was the discomfort due to its northernness, a culture shock that would wear off in time? (It took three decades, I was told, even to begin to belong up here near the Scottish border.)

We went away, but the pull of Northumbria was in my blood. In time we found our way back like returning exiles. "It's marvellous to be back in the North East" I heard myself say at my installation as Dean in Durham Cathedral. I wrote many blogs during my thirteen years in Durham, so I won't say more here. Except to recall one conversation I had with a college principal during my first year as Dean. "Michael" he said, "you'll never understand this Cathedral or the North East until you've been to your first Miners' Gala". So it proved. I began to feel (not just observe) something of the bonds of loyalty and solidarity felt among the North East's mining communities, forged by the shared perils of mining, the common experience of disaster, the loss of livelihood and dignity when the pits closed and the frustration that their people had been all but forgotten about in London where power lay and decisions were taken. I also learned how old wounds ran deep, such as the bitter memories of the miners' strike of 1984 that so divided workers and their families.

Finally (to bring the story up to date) we retired four years ago back to rural Northumberland. We live in what was once a pit manager's house, named after a Tyneside collier ship that went down in the 1880s. It’s right by the railway, Britain’s earliest east-west route that was open when Queen Victoria came to the throne. The River South Tyne tumbles down from the North Pennines a hundred yards away. How very North Eastern. St Cuthbert was here too, once upon a time: the medieval church up on the hill is dedicated to him. It was probably built to commemorate one of the halts made by his community as they travelled the North in the ninth century with the remains of their saints and the Lindisfarne Gospels looking for a permanent resting-place. But an even more ancient story is told here by the Roman Wall as it strides through our parish on the crest of the Whin Sill. There's nothing like the presence of antiquity to put things (like Brexit) into perspective, especially when you find you have what looks plausibly like a substantial Roman stone mortared into your garden wall. Who are we and where have we come from, it seems to ask as I gaze out at it out from the kitchen window. I want to reciprocate with the same question. If only stones could talk!

********

These memories have been stirred by reading Dan Jackson's enjoyable new book The Northumbrians: North-East England and Its People - A New History. (Point of order: do you hyphenate North East or not? When I published my own book on the Christian heritage of the region, Landscapes of Faith, my publisher decided that we wouldn't. So out of habit, I don't. The cover of Northumbrians hyphenates but Dan Jackson's text doesn't. Read what you like into that.)

I've loved this book. Perhaps I've read it too quickly because it is so readable. Its take on the North East is refreshingly different from so much other writing on the region. For all that it's called A New History, it doesn't follow any kind of timeline. Nor does it linger especially on landscape, architecture, literature and art as ends in themselves, rather, for what they tell us about the people whose land this is. For the book is a study of people and communities: at work and leisure, in war and peace, in learning and politics, public life and industry, and not least, in the ordinary days where life is lived in home and countryside, city, town and village.

Dan Jackson can write about these things so well, not only because he is a good historian but, much more importantly, because he is a native Northumbrian himself. He writes as a local from inside the experience of North Easternness - you can smell it in his prose and sense that he knows what he's talking about. He is ready to share his own experience of what it is like to grow up and live in the region - inhabit it, I mean, in a way no incomer like me ever can. So this is a very personal book. It's clear that he loves the North East and is proud to be a Northumbrian. But he doesn't rhapsodise as some literature is prone to do. He knows it too well, is too alive to its paradoxes, struggles and real pain, not least due to the steep decline in heavy industry that once made it the power-house of the nation. The book is all the better for having been written from the perspective of a critical friend.

If I had to recommend a book to someone moving to the North East for the first time to help them orientate themselves in a strange but beguiling land, this would be it. I could have done with it forty years ago. I might suggest that they begin by reading the first and last chapters. The opening chapter sets the scene and explores what and who we mean by the idea of "Northumbrian". The closing chapter ponders what the North East is becoming in the twenty-first century, what we should celebrate in the region, and what could be different and better. You'd expect me to say that I was particularly interested in the discussion about why our region voted so decisively for Brexit in 2016 (and before that, against the setting-up of a regional assembly in 2004). What's so helpful here is to begin to understand how the wider context of North East history, politics and culture have all played a part in shaping its assumptions.

For me, blown into the North East as a migrant from the south (and not properly "English" at that, having a German parent), Dan Jackson raises important questions about place, identity and belonging. I suppose I am one of Theresa May's "citizens of everywhere" who has called lots of places "home". She disparagingly went on to say that this made us "citizens of nowhere". But that's a non sequitur. It's true that part of me would love to apply the epithet Northumbrian to myself. I've lived and worked in the North East, retired here and God willing, expect to die here. So I envy Dan Jackson his authentic Northumbrian identity and the sense of place and belonging that come with it. But I know that it can never quite be mine, any more than I can still call myself a Londoner, except as identifying my place of origin. His book has helped me to see that.

My own relationship with the North East is more complex, perhaps because it's also coloured by an ever more insistent awareness that I am not simply British but European. But I can say that there is no other part of England where I would rather find myself at this late stage of life. There's nowhere alse that the bonds of affection and adoptive loyalty have ever run so deep. Which is why I've found so much to treasure in this book.

Mrs May's is not the only letter to Donald Tusk this week

Mrs May is not the only person who is writing this week to Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council. Here is the letter I have sent. I don't have a personal courier to deliver it by hand, as she does. Nevertheless I hope he will have received it by email and will be interested, even glad, to hear a different voice coming out of the United Kingdom as the Prime Minister triggers Article 50.

********

Dear Mr Tusk

You will be receiving a long-awaited letter from the UK Prime Minister this week. In it she will be giving formal notice that our nation intends to leave the European Union.

I did not want to let this week pass without writing to you myself. This is a purely personal letter of course. But I know that millions of British citizens will be feeling the same way as we head inexorably towards the door marked Brexit.

It will not be news to you that those of us who voted Remain in last year's Referendum are very sad that events have come to this point. That is putting it mildly. We believe as firm Europeans that the UK's proper place in the world is to be a committed EU member state. We think that the EU has been all the better for Britain's belonging to its family of nations. The UK has had so much to bring to the Union, and so much to gain from it in return. We have seen relationships across the EU grow and flourish during the years we have been a member. The world's safety and wellbeing surely lies in nations collaborating together for the sake of all our peoples and of all humanity. "Ever-closer union" is a noble aspiration.

So like the many who make up "the 48%" (perhaps more now than when the vote took place?), I am utterly dismayed at the prospect of walking away from the European Union in two year's time. There is no point in rehearsing the arguments now that the decision is made. But I don't think I am alone in wanting to place on record my profound sense of disappointment as the die is cast this week. There is room to debate whether or not action under Article 50 is reversible. But I don't expect a way back to the EU be opened in my lifetime.

I also want you to know that I have deplored the self-interest that has dominated the UK's rhetoric about the European Union since David Cameron announced the Referendum. All we seemed to hear as he tried to negotiate "a reformed EU" was the endlessly-repeated phrase "what's best for Britain". There was never any question about what might be best for Europe as a whole, or how this nation could benefit the EU. When we should have been celebrating the remarkable achievements of the past sixty years and helping to build a consensus about the future not just in this continent but worldwide, the only themes that seemed to matter were the economy, trade and migrants. I could not believe that this once outward-looking nation of ours had become so insular.

It's easy to come out with a long list of "if onlys" this week. It doesn't serve much purpose to say, if only the UK had been truly committed to the European Project in the first place. If only we had thrown ourselves into the EU with enthusiasm! But maybe sharing hopes, dreams and aspirations for a kinder and better world order just isn't the British way. Perhaps the European Union will be better off without this country's historic grudging, foot-dragging attitude to its membership.

We have just celebrated the EU's 60th birthday. Our founding parents (yes, I can still say "our" for the time being) believed that only economic, social, cultural and political cooperation between nations could reconstruct our continent free of the warfare and division that plagued it for so many centuries. As a Christian, I share their belief that the quest for peace and justice comes down to loving your neighbour as yourself. This is why supra-national organisations like the European Union are so essential. There is no future for the world unless we can all commit to looking beyond our national boundaries, not just with fine words but with actions that make a difference.

The EU faces many threats at present. Brexit is just one of them. I hope that the United Kingdom will always be a good neighbour and friend to the European Union, whatever the future holds. I hope that the Brexit negotiations will be amicable and free of bitterness and rancour. I am especially thinking of citizens from EU countries outside Britain who are resident in the UK, and of British citizens living and working in EU countries abroad. You know how anxious they are in the face of an uncertain future.

You can count on us who are "the 48%" to go on trying to be good Europeans. That includes a majority of British young people. They have only ever known a Britain that is part of the EU. Many of them are very angry that their future has been stolen from them by my silver-haired generation. But I am heartened when I hear them talk about politics and the kind of society they want to belong to. They are more articulate than I was at that age. They are all for grasping hold of our destinies as peoples and nations and making a difference. I think we can trust them, one day, to look again at this monumental folly we have bequeathed them, and undo it. When that day comes, I hope the European Union can be generous enough to welcome us back.

With my best wishes and prayers,
Michael Sadgrove

Life After Brexit: can we still be EU citizens?

In a blog on 9 March, I asked, "So how would Brexit affect you?" 

I said that quite apart from the economic and geopolitical reasons for the UK to remain in the European Union, the loss of EU citizenship would be a big deal for me personally. If the worst happened, I went on, might it be possible for us dismembered, forcibly exiled Europhiles to be reattached to the EU in some other way? Might other EU member states make provision for British people who do not want to be deprived of their European citizenship? I'm thinking of a special kind of dual citizenship we might call UK Plus whereby we could elect also to become honorary citizens of Germany, France, Ireland (Scotland one day?), any member state that valued its own links with British people and didn't want to sever ties any more than many of us do. And might the European Parliament pass some enabling legislation to make this possible?

At the time, I hadn't seen this question discussed anywhere. However, since June it's been actively debated in the press and on social media. A rush of UK citizens of Irish descent have been pursuing possible dual Irish citizenship alongside their British. Descendants of German Jewish parents exiled as a result of the Nazi holocaust are making similar approaches to the German Embassy (I think I would qualify for German citizenship under that rubric). If you are willing to invest a sufficiently large sum in business in those countries, I believe you can obtain citizenship in Cyprus or Estonia. Any of these paths would confer European citizenship de facto. 

However, there's something a bit artificial about acquiring citizenship in another EU country when your relationship with it is historical rather than actual. Still more does it feel odd when you're in effect buying it through a business transaction. There's a whiff of pretext in going down that road. It's not that I am really interested in becoming a German, a Cypriot, an Irishman or an Estonian for its own sake. It's a convenience for the sake of protecting my EU citizenship. For most of us, there would be no other reason for embarking on this quest. For myself, I am perfectly content to be British and don't hanker after any other nationality. 

But for more than four decades, UK citizenship has meant "British-in-the-European-Union". To belong to the one is to belong to all. It means being connected not just to an island but to a continent with its larger relationships and possibilities. Maybe many of us haven't fully appreciated how much it has formed and shaped us, what a privilege it is until it is taken away. (Though I also have to say that being a second generation holocaust survivor has perhaps given me a strong sense of European identity, something I've felt consciously ever since childhood.) 

So I am not alone in welcoming the initiative of Charles Goerens, a longstanding Democratic Party MEP from Luxembourg. He has written an article in the Independent arguing for what he calls "associate citizenship" of the European Union. He says: Among the powerful emotions provoked by the referendum – anger, regret and denial – was a sense of bereavement. Many British people consider themselves European and value their European citizenship, which struck a chord with me....It is for this reason that I drafted an amendment to a draft report...on possible changes to 'the current institutional set-up' of the European Union. The idea is simply to guarantee those who want it some of the same rights they had as full EU citizens, including the right of residence in the EU, and to be able to vote in European elections and be represented by an MEP.

His argument is that in current treaties, EU citizenship is already recognised as being different in kind from citizenship of a nation state. It's additional, and its privileges and responsibilities are not the same. So it ought to be possible to extend its meaning to include individual citizens of non-EU states (maybe restricting it to former EU states whose populations were therefore deprived of EU citizenship when they left) to enable them to continue to be connected to and represented in the Union if they wished to. This would in no way compromise national citizenship. But associate EU citizenship would allow the benefits of EU membership to continue to be enjoyed such as freedom of movement, access to health care and the right to reside in EU countries. 

In my March blog, I spelled out why I did not want my EU citizenship stolen from me. Yes, of course I have hugely valued the opportunities it has given to us and I think I can say I have personally taken advantage of them. More important is what the UK's membership has meant to our nation, our continent and our world. A Europe with the UK as a committed leading player could have done inestimable good in a world that even in the short months since the Referendum has become more and more uncertain and unstable. I still can't quite believe we have been so self-interested and foolish as to throw it all away. But we are where we are. There is no point in endlessly chewing it over, even though I am not going to allow it to be said that the vote supplied a mandate that was "clear", "decisive" or "overwhelming", all epithets in the government's rhetorical knapsack that are patently misleading and false.

So here's why I would willingly pay the membership fee ("no taxation without representation!" and vice-versa) to remain a citizen of the EU. It comes down to three things. 

First, it's about identity. The historical and cultural roots of our nation are inextricably European. Europe is where we belong and Europe is where we should remain. The EU is not a perfect realisation of what it means to be European, but it's the best we've got. We should not forget its achievements, for it has served the continent well since the last war, and given us aspirations to try to build a better world (yes, that phrase so maligned by the Prime Minister seems more appropriate than ever in these troubling times: who with any feeling for our common humanity would not want to be a "citizen of the world"?). If we don't securely mark our identity as Europeans, we shall be soon find ourselves relegated to the deserved status of little Englanders (for the Scots and Irish have shown a lot more sense over the EU than we English have). 

Secondly, it's about protest. Like so many, I've been sickened by the tone of so much of our political discourse during and since the Referendum. Crude nationalism. isolationism and xenophobia are only three of its more unpleasant features. We are all aware of how uneasy and afraid some - maybe many - of our immigrant friends and colleagues are feeling, whether they come from EU countries or beyond. Populism is fuelling resentments and hatreds as we have all seen to our alarm. So in the era of post-truth politics, I want to protest against this corrosion of what we used to call the British values of tolerance, understanding and decency. Brexit will be one more sign that we care less about our neighbour than we once did. For me, to hold associate EU citizenship would be an important symbol of wanting to follow a more excellent way. 

Thirdly, it's about resolve. Many of us want to signal our continuing commitment to the European project but aren't sure how to do this without appearing like backward-looking "Remoaners" who do not recognise a democratic vote, however narrow.  So here's a way of doing it. We may not be able to have our (blue?) passports carry the name European Union on the cover. But citizens of that Union is what we would continue to be. Every passage across a European border would remind us of it. And it would recall us to what we hold in common, and how our lives are infinitely richer and healthier and safer if we make common cause with our fellow human beings in our neighbourhood family of nations and beyond. EU citizenship along these lines would help us step out of the echo chamber of our island and live in a bigger community of giving and receiving in relationships of collaboration and trust. It would keep alive our wish to go on fighting for social justice, conserving the environment and defending the rights of others. With associate citizenship, we would continue through our vote to influence the European Union in these ways in the future. 

We are all at home with what I call "double belonging". There's nothing mysterious about being British as well as English (or Scots or Welsh). Many people hold dual citizenship of another country. Associate EU citizenship is simply an extension of a familiar idea. It's not ideal. Far better would have been for our country not to turn its back on the EU in the first place. But it did, and the arguments are over. We are living in a new reality now. But among the 48% of us who wanted to remain in the EU, there's a growing head of steam for keeping the European dimension alive in whatever way we can. Here's an idea about how that could mean something. It's worth exploring. 

And by the way, if you're wondering if this idea is somehow "unpatriotic", I believe our citizenship of our own nation will benefit too. Every belonging, every attachment, every pledge of loyalty is the better for having a larger context. We love our island home. But it's not all there is to being British. In our history, the seas around us were the highways that connected us with the peoples who lived across them. That's the metaphor to hold in mind - belonging, not separation. It's as true now as it's ever been that "it is not good for human beings to be alone".

"Where Do You Come From?" Thoughts on belonging and identity

"A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some spot of native land, where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of earth, for the labours men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar unmistakeable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge: a spot where the definiteness of early memories may be inwrought with affection, and kindly acquaintance with all neighbours, even to the dogs and donkeys, may spread not by sentimental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habit of the blood."

George Eliot in Daniel Deronda is talking about childhood, how our earliest "sense of place" helps form our instinct that we belong to the soil we live on, and that we should love it and let it teach us about the great world into which we have been born as its citizens. 

I was brought up in suburban north London. I may have caught the occasional glimpse of Eliot's world when riding my bicycle in Highgate Woods or roaming Hampstead Heath on my way back from school. But it was hard to love the net curtains, manicured privet hedges and creosoted fences of suburbia. To me they all came to symbolise the addiction to privacy that's a peculiarly English trait. We knew few of our neighbours by name and socialised with fewer still though they were kind, decent people. We all kept ourselves to ourselves. We liked it that way. I had a good upbringing there. But it didn't help me to understand the idea of community.

So where do I say I'm "from"? This question has exercised me for some time. My usual answer is "North East England". I've lived here for longer than anywhere else in my life. I've come to love the strong sense of identity here in this region, and the wonderful people we have lived amongst, both in County Durham and Northumberland. I feel I belong here in a way that's more true than any of the many places we've been glad to call "home" up and down the country. When we first came to work in Northumberland in the 1980s, I found a lived understanding of "community" that was new to me. The Cheviot farmers talk about sheep being "hefted" on to their hill, bound to it as their own place. That's how I've come to feel about the North East. I've "gone native" as they say.

But that's only a part of my answer. In the expanding concentric circles of my belonging, my being European has always been important too. I've blogged about this before, how my mother's family were German-Jewish war refugees whom this country took in before it was too late. In my childhood we found ourselves on the periphery of a community of German emigrés in north London, all of them a lot better off than we were. Perhaps the fact that my mother had married "out" (i.e. an Englishman) meant that we weren't altogether kosher. But at social gatherings, we all flipped easily from English to German and back again. Families compared notes about their German homelands: Bavaria, Swabia and my mother's native Westphalia. As children we went to Germany a number of times to sort out my mother's family affairs. I felt at home there, and still do. And that goes for all the other countries in our continent that I've visited, from Ireland via Spain, France and Austria to the Czech Rebgpublic, Slovakia and Hungary.

On my Twitter profile, it says that I am "a European at home in North East England". I thought carefully about how to phrase that. "North East" says that locality is important, George Eliot's sense of a native soil in a particular place. "European" says that our larger networks and associations are important too, our ability to think beyond national boundaries (and not to stop until we think of ourselves as "citizens of the world" which is what George Eliot goes on to speak about). What about "England"? 

I admit that I don't often speak about being "English" (except in France where "je suis Anglais" is the usual answer to "where are you from?"). I'm a British national as it says on my passport. And my sense of nationhood is profoundly important. I don't give it absolute value ("my country right or wrong") and I always want to nuance it by saying that both my smaller and my larger circles of belonging matter just as much. However, I guess that if you are at all moved by Rupert Brooke's poem "The Soldier" and can read it, not as Great War jingoism nor as cloying nostalgic sentimentalism but for what it is, a simple, affecting love poem to his country, you're a patriot at heart. "A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, / Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam" is precisely what George Eliot is talking about. For Brooke, it had become "a sweet habit of the blood" to think and - just as important - to feel like this. I think I'm beginning to grasp this as I inhabit the later decades of my life when asking who I have been is vital to understanding who I am now. 

The EU referendum is making us think about these questions, where and how and why we belong. Some people seem to think that the EU is all about creating a superstate that will do away with local, regional and national identities and the human dimensions we associate with homeland and home. But the exact opposite is the case. The European Union has been a staunch defender of regionalism and localism and funds have followed that conviction. We've seen how in our own islands, membership of the United Kingdom has promoted a growth in Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish identities, and the same is true across continental Europe. These are welcome developments. They express the important idea of "subsidiarity" whereby things are not undertaken centrally that are better done nationally or locally. That's usually associated with decision-making. But implicit in it is the more basic concept of belonging. That's why it's to the good when we associate to all the communities we live in - small, large and intermediate. They help us learn that ultimately, our family is nothing less than the whole human race. 

This isn't quite making a "patriotic case" for remaining in the EU. But I hope that at the very least, it begins to show how a patriotic love of our country and a grateful attachment to our locality are not only compatible with our membership of the EU but positively encouraged by it. 

So How Would Brexit Affect You?

I've tried in these blogs about the EU referendum to turn the question round, as I believe Christians should. What matters isn't just 'what's in it for us, what's in it for me?' but "what's in it for everyone else in the EU and what do we bring to the Union as our contribution to this family of nations?" It's a corporate implication of the second great commandment of the Torah quoted by Jesus: "love your neighbour as yourself".

But we wouldn't be human if we didn't wonder what our personal lives would be like if Brexit became a fact on 24 June. I won't pretend that it wouldn't be a personal nightmare to wake up and learn that this country had decided to walk away from the European Union. It would be a case of joining the hapless sailors at the start of The Tempest and crying "To prayers! To prayers!" But by then it would be too late to do much about it. 

I can't say how this "tempest" would affect the nation or me personally as far as the economy is concerned. Nobody can, though it doesn't stop a lot of people trying. But there is one thing that would change for me pretty decisively. And that is, that I would lose my European citizenship. I would no longer carry a passport that proclaimed "European Union" as well as "United Kingdom". I would no longer be able to pass through the green EU channel at customs. I wouldn't be able to carry an EHIC health card across Europe. There would be other losses too, real as well a symbolic.

But the loss of citizenship is a really big issue for me. To be an EU citizen has been part of my identity for most of my lifetime. It's a prized part of who I am, born of a German Jewish mother whose own parents were sheltered in Holland during the Nazi era, married to a woman with Irish heritage, owning a property in France. I feel completely at ease in continental Europe. It's my homeland, this dust whom Europe "bore, shaped, made aware, / Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam" (if you'll forgive a rather shameless borrowing of Rupert Brooke's famous poem). It's where I am connected and have always belonged. 

So what happens when, if, my precious European citizenship and the identity it confers is shorn from me? Can it be retrieved in any way other than a landscape of the mind, a land of lost content, a place of yesterday rather than today and tomorrow?

I hope and pray that it doesn't come to this. Because half in my mind is the idea that anything to do with my citizenship is a basic human right which should never involuntarily be removed. So here's my question.

Might it be possible for us dismembered, forcibly exiled Europhiles to be reattached to the EU in some other way? I'm thinking: might other EU member states make provision for British people who do not want to be deprived of their European citizenship? I'm thinking of a special kind of dual citizenship we might call UK Plus whereby we could elect also to become honorary citizens of Germany, France, Ireland (Scotland one day?), any member state that valued its own links with British people and didn't want to sever ties any more than many of us do. And might the European Parliament pass some enabling legislation to make this possible? 

As a European at home in North East England, I don't want to emigrate. I don't want to say farewell to these islands that I love, where my family and friends are, where so much of my life has been lived and where I have been fortunate enough to be happy. Britain has been good to my family and to me. But so has Europe. I don't want, I really do not want to be cast adrift from the mainland, collapse into a complacent island mentality that imagines that it can pretend to a nostalgically imagined, and in the end futile, self-sufficiency. I don't want my grandchildren to grow up on such an island and with such a defensive attitude to the wider world. And it's their future we should be thinking about, not just our own. My children and grandchildren were born as Europeans. It's their birthright. It mustn't be stolen from them.  

I've not seen this question discussed anywhere though I have today written to a national daily paper about it. But I very much want to lay down a marker that once given, it is not acceptable to be deprived of our hard-won citizenship. I shall accept that Brexit is the will of the British, if it turns out that way. The people will have spoken. But minorities have rights too. Their voices need to heard. And I very much doubt that there aren't others who will echo these thoughts and can perhaps suggest where they might be taken for discussion. 

You can follow Christians for EU on FaceBook and on Twitter @Xians4EU.