One Jew's view of antisemitism in the Labour Party. And related matters

It takes only one parent, if it’s the mother – as in my case – to make you a Jew. The Nazis were even more indulgent: a single Jewish grandparent was enough to send you to the gas chambers. That means not only I but even my sons would be candidates for extermination if they made a comeback.

All this suggests that I’m far more likely to be a victim of antisemitism than a perpetrator of it.

But it doesn’t put me completely out of reach of antisemitic thoughts, even less of the accusation of harbouring them. Not that I can actually be antisemitic myself: the reproach reserved for Jews who express a view seen by other Jews as antisemitic is that they are ‘self-hating Jews’.

It’s an offensive suggestion and I resent it. But I have to admit, if I’m entirely honest, principally with myself, that the reproach wasn’t entirely misplaced.

Like many to the left of centre politically, I view all racism as abhorrent. That certainly includes antisemitism but it also includes discrimination against Blacks as it includes Islamophobia. There are aspects of the behaviour of the state of Israel towards Palestinians which, it seems to me, are expressive of deeply and violently Islamophobic attitudes and therefore deeply racist ones.

It’s when I make that kind of point that I’m most likely to find myself taxed with being a ‘self-hating Jew’.

Now, in one debate on the subject with a Zionist friend, I found myself suddenly interrupted by her.

‘You said “the Jews”,’ she told me, clearly pained.

I was about to defend myself saying that I meant ‘the Jews of Israel’. But of course I didn’t: there are many Israeli Jews, though not a majority, who deeply dislike the behaviour of their government. What I really meant to criticise was the Israeli state.

But that wasn’t what I said. When I said ‘the Jews’ I was labelling all Jews as somehow culpable for the behaviour of the Israeli state towards Palestinians. Which is ironic: Israel often inflicts collective punishment on innocent people, taking action against the family of a terrorist for the behaviour of that terrorist. Here was I using the same kind of perverse thinking, accusing all Jews of sharing in the guilt of the minority that forms the Israeli government.

It’s easy to see how this happens. Israel is the only Jewish state. It’s relatively easy to slip from referring to Israel into referring to Jews. That explains my error but it doesn’t excuse it. Loose words can lead to loose thoughts. I had to find a way to maintain my criticism of the behaviour of the Israeli government without letting it drift into a criticism of all Jews.

There is evidence that elements within my own party, Labour, have not been that circumspect. Some have let their anger over the excesses of Zionism spill over into something much more toxic. There may also be others who actually harbour anti-Jewish sentiments, but have been granted too much tolerance because they are sound in their opposition to Islamophobia and violent Zionism.

There have been honourable examples of reactions to antisemitism. The Labour MP Naz Shah, attacked over certain remarks, had the decency to admit that 'the language I used was anti-Semitic, it was offensive'. She accused herself of ignorance and described herself as being on a learning journey, and thanked the Jewish community for the ‘amazing compassion’ it had shown her.

It’s hard to demand more of anybody than that they sincerely recognise their errors and work to eliminate them.

Unfortunately, not everyone is prepared to go that far. Some may indeed be prepared to protect and cover up antisemitic elements. Far more widespread is a simple failure to do anything at all. The evil is left to fester in the hope that it goes away or, at least, won’t attract adverse publicity.

Festering sores turn septic, and adverse publicity has burst out anyway, drowning the party in a scandal that drags on from day to day.

Corbyn: not providing what Labour most needs - leadership

The failure to act has its source at the top of the Party, with the man who holds the leadership, Jeremy Corbyn. A report on antisemitism in the party was prepared in June 2016; nearly two years on, it hasn’t yet been implemented. The intention is to have an in-house lawyer working on the problem; it seems that the paperwork to appoint one is on Corbyn’s desk and hasn’t been signed.

This is Corbyn’s way. He’s marked by a terrible indolence, a dangerous inattention to detail. The most recent scandal broke out when it emerged that he had offered support on FaceBook for the artist of a mural that was to be overpainted. Corbyn spoke out in favour of free speech, apparently unaware that at the heart of the mural was a deeply antisemitic caricature of Jews gorging themselves while others suffered the terribly poverty to which they’d condemned them.

Corbyn has apologised, but he has had to admit that he wrote his post before he’d looked at the mural. See what I mean? Indolence. Inattention to detail.

In the latest scandal, he’s had to apologise several times because he couldn’t get an apology out that was adequate first time. Or second time. Again, a failure of political instinct, a failure of effort to get things right from the start.

His supporters claim that the scandal is just a weapon to use against Corbyn. I think the best response to that came from a Shadow Minister quoted in the Guardian: ‘… because it’s true it’s being used against Jeremy doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem.’

There is a serious problem of antisemitism in the Labour Party. It needs to be rooted out. And that needs to happen soon.

Making things happen. That sounds like an essential ingredient of leadership. And what’s needed right now in the Labour Party is leadership.

That’s something we ought to be able to count on from the Leader. Sadly, there’s precious little sign of that , as he flounders from apology to apology, taking too little action too late, and handing weapons – genuine, usable weapons – to his adversaries. To our adversaries.

Antisemitism is a morally crucial question. That makes it something vital for Labour to address. But in purely political terms, it’s not the biggest question facing Labour or Corbyn.

That’s the question of Brexit. And it’s another issue on which it’s proving impossible to pull a coherent stance out of him. Another issue on which the Leader’s showing himself incapable of leadership.

Reinforcing my sense that whatever the solution may be to the Labour Party’s present woes, it’s going to have to start with a change at the top.

Age of midgets

As Britain staggers into an ill-considered Brexit, it feels to me that future generations, struggling with its painful consequences, will look back and wonder at the age of midgets that led them there.

Corbyn, Cameron, May
Do we really deserve no better?

Britain has been here before. Neville Chamberlain trying to buy peace from Hitler. Anthony Eden taking Britain into war over Suez. John Major crashing out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. Second or third-rate Prime Ministers failing to meet their challenges.

These are Tory examples, but Labour has its own spectacular mediocrities to add to the mix.

Ramsay MacDonald, as Prime Minister in 1931, led Labour into coalition with the Tories. His austerity policies crucified the people Labour was set up to defend. Tony Blair, though a giant when with Gordon Brown he battled child poverty and invested in the NHS, chose to be a moral pygmy when he obsequiously followed the US into a needless, harmful and unjustified war in Iraq.

It’s such midgets who dominate the British political scene once more.

In both main parties, leaders are giving precedence to the health of their parties over the wellbeing of citizens. Britain is sleepwalking into Brexit, a slow-motion car crash which the rest of us can only watch with growing horror because we don’t have a leader with the guts to step on the brake or turn the wheel.

The Tories are the most culpable. David Cameron, the previous Prime Minister, called an unnecessary referendum in the hope that a comfortable victory for continued EU membership would see off the toxic and insurgent Eurosceptic wing of his party.

Unfortunately, as we know, the result went the other way.

That result was deeply flawed. And not just because the victory was wafer thin.

First of all, it was a choice between a single option – there was just one way to stay in the EU – and a myriad of others – leaving the EU with no relationship in place (hard Brexit), agreeing a trading arrangement, staying in the Customs Union, staying in the Single Market, and there may be others. A plethora of Brexit campaign groups testifies to the diversity of views.

Secondly, Brexiters made false promises. Far from saving money, Brexit will cost us more. New trade agreements will be harder to sign than was claimed, and the terms will be less favourable than those we are giving up. It’s unclear how we can avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

It seems likely that once the real nature of Brexit is known, the level of dissatisfaction would produce a majority for the Remain side at least as big as the Brexit camp won in 2016.

There’s a majority in parliament for staying in the EU, though making it effective would require cross-party cooperation, with pro-EU Tories and Labourites voting together. Against the Tory leadership of Prime Minister Theresa May, but also against the Labour leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.

Alongside Cameron, these are the other two midgets of our time.

May claims to be pro-EU but refuses to oppose Brexit. Corbyn’s a long-term Eurosceptic, but his party has a 2:1 Remain majority. Though his fans trumpet his honesty and courage, he refuses to come clean as a Brexiter or to endorse a Remain position. Again, his fans like to underline the contrast between him and Tony Blair, but this kind of spineless prevarication is like nothing so much as the spin Blair fed us on Iraq while proclaiming his honesty and demanding our trust.

May won’t oppose Brexit for fear of splitting her party. Corbyn won’t oppose it for fear of losing a number of supporters for his own. Both hide behind the ‘will of the people’ as expressed in the referendum. However, Britain isn’t a plebiscitary democracy but a parliamentary one. We elect MPs and delegate decisions to them, reserving the right to remove them next time if they go against our wishes. Constitutionally, nothing stops MPs voting against the referendum result.

That may be too much to ask. Still, the referendum said nothing about what kind of Brexit we should accept. Once the real terms of Brexit are clear, what’s to prevent a specific question being asked about them? Voters could choose between accepting the terms, going for a hard Brexit instead, or staying in the EU. A new referendum would protect MPs from the accusation of rejecting the people’s will.

What would be the harm?

May’s ruled it out. She feels, probably rightly, that it would deepen the rifts in her own party.

Corbyn’s ruled it out too. Though, as is his wont, in no consistent way. When Diane Abbott, a supporter within his leadership team, called for a second referendum he took no action. That was odd, because she has a trail of public relations disasters behind her, for which most Shadow Cabinet members would have long ago been sacked. When, on the other hand, his rival Owen Smith made the same suggestion, he was fired at once. It seems that Corbyn, a serial rebel – 500 votes against the party leadership before taking the leader’s mantle himself – is happy to be a top-down autocrat when it suits him. He also endorses the conservative principle of collective cabinet responsibility over the national interest, when he can use it as a weapon against an opponent.

Like Blair, he prefers pragmatism to principle and personal authority over the national interest. He also seems committed to preserving another fine tradition, that of political double standards.

So the midgets at the head of both parties keep the country firmly on the road to Brexit and the slow-motion car crash continues to unfold before our fascinated but impotent gaze.

The final judgement will be made by later generations. It is they who will suffer the consequences of Brexit. I suspect they’ll be asking, ‘how did our parents choose such petty and incompetent leaders when we so badly needed figures of stature?’

Which is my own question precisely.

Symbolising nothing

Every evening at 8:00, buglers assemble under Menin Gate in the Belgian town of Ypres to blow the Last Post.

Last Post at the Menin Gate. You can listen to it too, if you want

That’s the call sounded to mark the end of the day in the British Army. It’s also used at military funeral. Ypres, or Ieper in Dutch, is known as Wipers in English. The Menin Road was taken by tens of thousands of men marching out to the killing fields of the Ypres Salient in the First World War. The Menin Gate is covered by the names of some 54,000 who vanished but have no known grave.

The Last Post is a moving tribute to the memory of all those who died at that time. Symbols are like that: they move us because they conjure up sentiments we associate with significant moments, whether tragic or triumphant. Sometimes, though, the symbolism is all there is – there simply is no substance behind it.

In December of last year, the British government, which has achieved precious little in the Brexit negotiations so far, announced that the country would be reverting to blue passports. This was greeted by Nigel Farage, former leader of the ‘United Kingdom Independence Party’, UKIP, as a ‘happy Brexmas’ present. Because, of course, it would be a reversion to the former colour of the passport before we joined the European Union.

The old British passport.
A tradition denied by the EU. Or was it?

That sounds like an assertion of tradition, and a proud tradition, of Britain as an independent nation. Except that it quickly emerged that there had never been any obligation from the EU for Britain to switch passport colour to the present colour – there are other EU nations with blue passports. Even in Britain, the ‘iconic’ blue passport dates only from 1921.

In other words, as a tradition, it’s a pretty shallow one.

However, it mattered to Brexiters. Possibly because they’re struggling, as the reality approaches, to find anything much else positive to say about our departure from the Union. The symbolism seemed important.

But now we’ve discovered that the contract to produce the new passports has been won, in an open tender, by a Franco-Dutch company, Gemalto. It beat a British competitor, De La Rue. It did so because it could guarantee the same quality for £120 million less over the five years the contract is due to last.

Five years: that’s well into Brexit.

Now that's potent symbolism. What that’s saying is that the British taxpayer – and indeed consumer – can at times (I’d say often) get a better deal by shopping abroad. And that’s what Brexit’s really about: putting up protective walls around uncompetitive industries.

De La Rue is appealing the decision to award the contract against them. If it wins, that will say something powerful about what we’re trying to achieve with Brexit: it will mean that we are telling British citizens to pay more to protect inefficiency. Which is very much in line with what Brexit is promising generally: higher food prices, higher prices on a wide range of goods we currently import, higher prices to find workers in key industries for which the British apparently have no taste.

You may say, at least by taking such a step we protect British workers.

Well, no. Because workers are taxpayers too. As Brexit Britain finds itself financing more and more inefficiency of this kind, it will find that more and more workers are being forced more and more often to dip into their own pockets to protect such jobs. Inevitably, that can’t be sustained indefinitely.

The protection that was supposed to preserve jobs will be impossible to fund in the long run and unemployment will grow – as will poverty.

So what can one say about the precious blue passport? Adapting Shakespeare, I’d have to say it was a tale, told by an idiot, and symbolising nothing.

He wrote ‘signifying’. And he was talking about life. But, hey, this way it seems to work just as well for blue passports and Brexit generally.

A festival like a war zone

Ah, the joy of waking up to a morning of utter stillness!

Sometimes pleasure doesn’t need anything particular to happen. Sometimes it’s enough that something cease. Simple absence can do as much as any presence.

By sheer accident, and without either intending it or knowing about it, we took possession of our flat in Valencia at the time of the annual Fallas festival. A ‘falla’ is a wooden structure built in the street – often at an intersection, presumably as a means to optimising traffic flow – usually on some an amusing theme, or at any rate an uplifting one, such as the seven deadly sins, loneliness or breast cancer.

A powerful falla for breast cancer

Falla outside the town hall

A touching falla to loneliness

Several of the ones we saw reflected a theme of our day – a caricature of that fine President the US electorate voted against but the US constitution put into office. I suppose laughing at him is a reasonably healthy response. The alternative would be crying, which would be more effective and a great deal less encouraging.

A familiar figure clutching a US flag
With apologies for the poor focus. But then his is just as uncertain

While the Fallas are up, many Valencians don traditional dress and process through the streets, often accompanied by a brass band. This is a charming sight, as old and young, men and women, girls and boys, the able-bodies and the disabled all take part. They look wonderful and they reflect a powerful sense of community, embracing all walks of life, although to be quite truthful, the costumes in the city centre do contain just a tad more silk and are more luxuriously embroidered than the ones in the less well-heeled (or well-skirted) outer suburbs.

Members of a Fallas procession

The costumes are complex. A friend can be a great help

The only trouble is that once you have seen fifteen of these processions, the charm tends to wear off a little. At number fifty or sixty, even though they embrace old and young, men and women, girls and boys, able-bodied and disabled, they start to spread a sense of sameness, brass band or no. One starts to long for a little variety, provided in my case by a helpful pickpocket, in a dense crowd, who freed me of the burden of carrying my (brand new) work phone any further. 

That certainly broke the monotony for me and left me some far livelier feelings.

Those feelings were principally directed against myself. As Danielle pointed out, “why on earth were you carrying your work phone with you on a Sunday in the first place? And how often do I have to tell you not to put a phone in an outside pocket? Don’t you learn?”

It’s true that I’ve twice been relieved of phones by pickpockets, and the previous time it was in Madrid. Now, I’ve spent a great deal of time in Spain and intend to spend a great deal more, and it is not my experience that the country is any less honest than any other. However, it does seem to be endowed with more than the usual quota of pickpockets, and they seem particularly deft at their work. A lesson I need to learn. As my wife likes to remind me.

“She seems very wise,” my HR colleague Laura told me when I reported the loss.

“She is,” I replied, “and keeps telling me it’s a shame I don’t listen to her enough.”

“How odd!” said Laura, “that’s exactly the kind of conversation I keep having with my husband.”

The other custom associated with the Fallas is the throwing of fire crackers. There are even fenced off areas devoted to the practice, though that doesn’t seem to stop people chucking them wherever they like. There seems to be a particular variety that has been volume-enhanced, so to speak, so they let of a fearful retort. They’re the heavy artillery of crackers, where the usual ones are just small arms.

Now, I love fireworks. Arching up in the sky, bursting far above our heads, raining down multi-coloured and beautifully patterned collections of sparks, they’re a joy. The noise they make is clearly just a secondary characteristic, contributing little if anything at all to the spectacle.

Crackers, on the other hand, are just noisy, providing only the secondary effect. And, in my view, contributing little to the spectacle.

In fact, during the Fallas, the seem to convert the otherwise delightful city of Valencia into a latter-day version of Beirut at its worst. After a brief silence, new volleys of small crackers will suddenly start again. Palestinians are exchanging fire with regular Lebanese soldiers. Then, as the firing intensifies, it’s clear that the Druze militias have opened up against Falangists. Finally, as the heavy-artillery crackers start up in another sustained roll of thunder, you can hear Hezbollah exchanging cannon fire with Israeli missile emplacements.

Of course, it’s nothing like as bad as Beirut. There’s no fear, for instance, of being hit and maimed or killed oneself, for instance. No risk of anything much worse than having your phone lifted. But, in my judgement, not being quite as terrifying as Beirut, is a low bar to set for any form of popular entertainment.

Eventually the whole thing ends in a literal blaze of glory. All the fallas, being made of wood, are inflammable and, as midnight strikes at the end of the four-day festival, they are all set alight. The Fallas are destroyed by Fi-re (that at least should tell you how to pronounce it). Strings of bonfires stretch out across the city while fireworks (at last) burst overhead. A fitting end for essentially ephemeral art.

Cremà de Fallas.
A blazing end for truly ephemeral art

And then – peace returns. As though the militias had laid down their arms. The Israeli Defence Forces had withdrawn to their borders. Hezbollah had decided that it was time to transform itself into a social service group and held a mass destruction of its weapons.

A quiet morning dawns. The citizens can sleep again. Until they go about their business in calm with no further fear of an explosion behind them to startle them out of their tranquillity without warning at any moment.

At least for another year.

Abdicating decision-making can be such a good decision

I’ve long since given up – or at any rate delegated to a significantly more competent authority – power of decision over where I live. 

After 35 years of marriage, it’s become clear which matters are much better left to my wife, and choosing addresses is one where her superiority is manifest and entirely recognised by me.

Maybe, in the fullness of time, we'll identify some areas in which I excel in turn.

The latest address selected by Danielle is a small flat in Valencia, in southern Spain. It takes the place of the apartment in Kehl, in the far west of Germany, which we recently vacated. Kehl has many great virtues – the city of Strasbourg just beyond its doorstep, the Vosges mountains in France and the Black Forest in Germany, the river Rhine, the Swiss city of Basel an easy drive away – but Valencia, as well as its charm as a city, also has the sea and a quality particularly dear to me right now (after an apparently interminable winter), of a mild and pleasant climate.

I say particularly dear right now because, before leaving for Valencia, I spent two hours in a sleet storm stuck on the tarmac at Luton aiport waiting for de-icing. That’s in spite of our being just a week away from the reintroduction of summer time. Whatever the calendar may say, England continues grey, cold and wet. The idea of something that actually feels like spring was immensely attractive.

As a general rule, when we’re moving to a new home, we go through a little pantomime where I visit the place before the deal is finalised. I try to gauge Danielle’s feelings on the choice, so that I can prove my unerring judgement by shaking my head and suggesting “not sure whether this is right for us” about ones she doesn’t like, or expressing enthusiasm for the ones she does. This time we dispensed with this admittedly slightly vacuous ritual, and she just went ahead and took the flat before I’d even seen it.

That made the trip out doubly exciting: not just getting away from winter but getting to see the place of which I was now the proud joint-owner without having more than a vague idea of what it looked like.

The event entirely fulfilled my expectations. OK, the city wasn’t that hot – only 14C, which is just nudging the bottom end of what one might call spring-like but, hey, that was fourteen degrees more than in England when I left.

High celings in Valencia
Danielle in the foreground with Sheena
In the background: Ikea man assembling a bed

As for the new flat – well, it has ceilings that feel as high as a small church’s, mini-balconies at both ends, and amusingly tiled floors. What’s more, Danielle, my son Nicky and daughter-out-law (who I hope will soon become a daughter-in-law) Sheena, saw to it before I even got there, that those fine people at Ikea would equip us with beds in time for our first night in the place. That was vital, since some of the furniture we rescued from our old home in Kehl is due to arrive here, but not until May. Those tiled floors may be amusing, but I suspect they’d be no fun to sleep on.

Tiles on our bedroom floor
Fun to look at. Not to sleep on

A great city, a huge improvement in weather, and an attractive flat. Everything combined to confirm the quality of the decision I’d made.

That, of course, is the decision to leave all decisions about the places we live in to Danielle and only turn up once they’ve been made.

Nicky enjoying the mini-balcony at the back

Vintage 1982

One of the advantages of clearing out a home, as I described a couple of weeks ago, is that you find lots of things you’d forgotten about. Many of them deserve nothing better than being forgotten, and there’s nothing to do but throw them away. Others, however, it’s a pleasure to rediscover.

The flat we were leaving was on the Franco-German border and we were going to be travelling back through France. Since we were running out of wine at home, this was a welcome opportunity to buy some more. Good wine at sensible prices.

However, down in our ex-cellar we discovered not just a few bottles of wine, but several dozen. That rather eliminated the need to buy any on the way back to England. There were, in fact, rather more bottles than we were able to get into the car with the other belongings we chose to rescue, so we gave a number away – though the smallest number possible.

These were the leftovers of a time when I used to buy bottles of wine when they were young and cheap and lay them down for a few years till they became far better. Fine wines at cheap prices. However, few English houses have cellars, so that’s rather gone by the board since we returned to the country. But it was wonderful to find that some bottles had survived. Even though, in some cases, this wasn’t a matter of saving a fine wine but rather of reawakening an old memory.

Our oldest wine was a Brouilly from 1982. 35 years old. Older than my sons.

Well, we certainly aged that one...

Twice, in our wine-collecting days, Danielle and I went to the wine fair in Hagenthal, not far from her home village in Alsace, Eastern France. Ah, those were different days. Not necessarily better, just different. The police let it be known that they would not be carrying out alcohol tests on drivers near the fair for as long as it lasted, so tasting posed no danger – no danger of arrest that is, though plenty of danger of injury to oneself or others.

The first time was in around 1984, which was when we bought the Brouilly. I knew little enough about such wines at that time and chose the ones I bought merely on the basis of taste. This one seemed good and I assumed it would become better with a little aging.

For second visit to the fair, we were accompanied by our sons. The younger, Nicky, must have been about four at the time. He stuck to me like glue and insisted on trying a sip of every wine I tasted, leaving him in a curious state by the time the evening ended.

Different times, as I said. But not necessarily better.

At least, it seems that the experience did no lasting damage to him. Unless one counts his invariable tendency to challenge my judgement on any matter we discuss. Which, considering that I fed him wine when he was four, is perhaps not entirely out of place.

And the wine itself? Well, a Brouilly is a Beaujolais. Some can be kept quite a while, but the Brouilly only five to ten years. We tasted a bottle of the 1982 when we got home. And then tipped the rest down the drain, which I’m certain helped clear it quite effectively.

Not a great wine, as I said, but an eloquent reminder of days gone by.

Cats. Dogs. Natural Justice

Every now and then, our pets gather on our stairs. They sit there and observe the comings and goings below. But I'm sure they also discuss matters of significance: after all, these meetings look like nothing so much as the kind of philosophical discussion groups that would have graced Athens. 

Very Platonic.

Staircase meeting
between (left to right) Luci, Toffee and Misty

Now, I believe we can learn a lot from animals. And all the more so if they're tackling some of the great questions of philosophy and ethics. Like, say, natural justice.

We all believe in natural justice, right? Somewhere out there, there are principles that exist independent of us, but which we all recognise and generally try to follow - and when we don't, most of us feel guilty about it.

Why, one of the finest writers of English today, Tom Stoppard, had a character in Professional Foul point out that even in children there is a sense of fairness which they protest about when it's infringed:

A small child who cries 'That's not fair' when punished for something done by his brother or sister is apparently appealing to an idea of justice which is, for want of a better word, natural. And we must see that natural justice, however illusory, does inspire many people's behaviour much of the time.

Sadly, I may be rather too much of a cynic for this kind of thinking. My problem is that while I've seen children cry out 'that's not fair' when another child receives a gift that they missed out on; I've yet to see a child make the same complaint when he or she receives a gift another child was denied.

That makes me feel that the claim 'that's not fair' isn't actually an appeal to natural justice. It's an assertion of self-interest. It's what lies behind the attitude of a business executive who takes a bonus even though the company's going down the pan and workers are being laid off.

Now, what's true of children and executives is true of animals too.

In the mornings, Misty, our cat, likes to wait for the dogs to move away from their bowls of breakfast kibble. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't normally enjoy dog's biscuits. But there's something irresistible about taking someone else's food.

Toffee takes a different view.

When she saw him going for her food, she was off into the kitchen like a flash. She weighs just half as much as Misty but when she decided to drive him away, he went. She knew it wasn't fair that he was eating her food. Helped, I suspect, by the fact that his own conscience was telling him that what he was doing was wrong.

Misty retreats. Driven away by the featherweight Toffee

But things weren't over. Toffee moved back on her bowl when Misty left. But the cat didn't give up. He just moved over to the other bowl - Luci's.

It was Toffee's reaction to that move that interested me. She moved over as though she was trying to drive Misty away from that bowl too. But then she just took a look. She clearly decided 'that's Luci's dish. It doesn't matter.' Then she returned her attention to her own bowl and left Misty in peace to empty Luci's.

'Hey, what are you doing, Misty? Oh, I see. Eating Luci's food. Carry on.'

See? 'It's not fair to eat my food' but 'eating someone else's? No problem.'

An invaluable lesson in the essence of natural justice. Delivered by my animals.

In the summer of 1979, I attended a two-month workshop in Aosta, an enchanting market town in a fabulous long Alpine valley of northern Italy. To give you an idea of just how fabulous, the nature park there is called the Gran Paradiso, or Great Paradise. And it deserves the name.

Val d'Aosta

It’s Italy in political terms only. It was once a town in a country called Savoy stretching from Turin in the south to Chambéry in the north. Its king ascended the Italian throne when it was first created, but at the price of giving up the northern part of his ancestral lands, today part of France.

Aosta became the only French-speaking area that stayed with him, because it was on the Italian side of the Alps. Mussolini, as a fanatical nationalist, resented having a French town within his Fascist nation, so he shipped in lots of people from the deep south, from Calabria. Other Italians followed after the war so, when I got there, the French-speaking population was an embattled minority. Like many native groups being submerged by incomers, they had a single term for the Italian-speaking outsiders: they were all ‘Calabresi’.

One old Aostan particularly sticks in my memory. He joined me on the terrace of a hotel, where I was enjoying a warm Alpine sunset over a glass of wine, and poured out his heart into my not entirely willing ear. The tragedy of his life? His daughter who had married an “Italian”. Why, he told me tearfully, she could have married someone from Chambéry or Turin – either would have been acceptable – but instead she chose someone from Genoa. Now, in my book that’s a northern Italian city; in his, it was from the deep south, its inhabitants just another version of Calabrese.

The tears weren’t only down to sentiment. There was a fair element of liquid lubrication there, as it was easy to tell whenever he leaned close enough for me to smell his breath. Which made it slightly surprising when he announced to me with great seriousness that he never touched alcohol. It took me a while to understand what he meant, but eventually it dawned on me: he never drank spirits. Wine, on the other hand, simply didn’t count as alcohol. More an essential component, I suppose, of the very spirit of the Valley of Aosta.

Why am I recalling all this now?

Because yesterday it became clear that Italy, my native country, had elected a hung parliament in which various brands of nationalists and populists took most of the seats and prepared to bicker with each other endlessly over power. “Ingovernabile” was the verdict of one of the leading dailies of the nation.

Well, it’s not the first time Italy has seemed ungovernable. When I got there in 1979, it had been two months without a government. When I left, it had been four months without a government.

And yet, it all ran perfectly smoothly. Buses turned up at bus stops. Shops were open and sold goods. Restaurants operated. You could get a drink when you wanted one even if, unlike my Aostan acquaintance, you felt inclined to move beyond wine to something a little stronger.

It was an object lesson to the world, I felt. A nation could live just fine without a government. We all make far too much fuss about the need to have governments around all the time.

Indeed, in Italy, especially right now, the problem isn’t the absence of a government. It’s going to be when one or more of the leading parties forms one. Their xenophobic, intolerant and populist nationalism may well be just the kind of thing that would have made Mussolini proud.

Italy may be about to deliver another object lesson to the world. It may show us all that it’s far less dangerous to have no government than to have entirely the wrong kind of government. A lesson the United States is already teaching us daily.

A rolling stone sheds some more moss

Closing an era. Moving on. Turning the page. All those clichés. Danielle, and I have just done them all. 

Again.

Turning the page is particularly apposite. My grandmother once told me that I had occupied three pages in her address book, I'd moved so often. And that was while I was still a student, before I even got launched on my removal-littered career.

A few days ago, Danielle counted fourteen places we'd lived in since we've been married. As she's just bought us a new flat in Valencia, in Spain, we're ready for the fifteenth. Which will be fun, since I've not seen the place and I'm looking forward to discovering it.

But before we get to number 15, we've had to clear up number 10. That was our flat in Kehl, just into Germany on the east bank of the Rhine, opposite Strasbourg in France's most eastern province, Alsace.

The Kehl Passerelle between Germany and France
No blood runs beneath it today

When I describe Alsace as being in France I should add "today". The country Alsace belongs to is a matter of history and not just geography. Danielle's grandfather was born German and her mother spent four years of her childhood under German rule. Today, Kehl has a soaring footbridge across the Rhine, so we can stroll across from one country to another in leisure and at ease, without even showing a document. It's a monument to the resolution that never again should blood be wasted over that border, as it has so often down the centuries.

Cellars and attics are great but they're dangerously tempting. They become repositories for huge quantities of things that we find it hard to part with but which we never actually use or even look at, preferring just to know that we still own them though they do nothing for us. Our flat in Kehl contained twelve years' worth of accumulated possessions, and at least the same amount again in the cellar - boxes and boxes dumped there and forgotten about until we had to deal with them as we left the place.

It took four days of intense work. The first day was spent packing things for Spain, making some hard choices on the way: we decided to take less than a third of our possessions. On day two, once the removals van had left with the stuff for Valencia, we had to find people we could give things to, and prepare the rest for dumping. On the third day, three men turned up with a dumper lorry and dumped a huge pile of our belongings in it, throwing them in without respect or care, breaking up chairs and tables, transforming them from objects to some of which we were attached, into simple junk.

Then there were the books. There were 3000; we kept fewer than 300. The entrance hall was once lined with well-stocked bookshelves. Gradually the books had to go. Then the bookshelves went too. It was a long drawn-out parting ritual that brought home at last to me that we were truly leaving.

The hall well-lined with books; shelves emptying as boxes fill;
the bare hallway at the end

Fortunately, though, we didn't have to throw any books into the dumper. A wonderful woman came around to see us not just once but five times, bringing empty boxes for the books and cheerfully carting full ones downstairs and into her car, more quickly and apparently effortlessly than I could, despite her seventy years. They'll be sold for a small sum a kilo, but they'll go to someone who wants them, and whatever money they generate will be used for charitable purposes.

Day four of the trip was when we wrapped things up. A few more things could be given away. As much as we could get into our car went into it, for the trip back to England with us. And then came the really heart-rending moments: the decision that this or that precious possession had to go to the tip or charity. My PhD notes. Danielle's long-treasured Christmas-tree decorations, practically family heirlooms, went to a charity. The latter was particularly sad: we could probably have fitted the decorations into the car after all, but now we've parted with them.

That's what closing a chapter means: a lot of partings and almost inevitably at least one leading to regrets. We just have to keep reminding ourselves that if we were able to live without those things for so many years, we probably didn't really need them that badly. Like most rationalisations, that's persuasive though hardly a consolation for a sentimental hurt.

Finally, we climbed into the heavily-loaded car and headed for home, having pulled up our roots in Germany.

Not that Kehl really feels all that German any more. Even when we moved there, we'd hear a lot of French in the streets. One of the benefits of the euro was that prices were entirely comparable on each side of the border, and a number of Strasbourg residents worked out that there were a lot of things that could be bought more cheaply in Germany. Most shops had at least one French-speaking employee. Indeed, I even heard one shopkeeper apologise to a client for having only German speakers. It struck me as a delicious irony that the German owner of a shop in Germany had to apologise for conducting his business in German. A powerful illustration, if any were needed, of the principle that it's the customer who counts.

On this visit, however, things had gone far further. The Strasbourg tram now runs all the way to Kehl. One now hears more French than German on the main street. Instead of being short of French staff, there are now shops in Kehl with only French employees, where there is no native German speaker. Kehl is rapidly turning into a French town.

It was a French possession once before, in the eighteenth century. But that was down to military occupation. This time it was the natural extension of a conurbation. A far more civilised way of achieving the same end.

It seems Kehl is setting out on a new era of its existence just as we end the era of our residence there. We've parted from our favourite flat, from many good friends and, least important of all but nonetheless a wrench, from many things we thought mattered to us.

We may well be back. To see the friends, mainly. To visit Strasbourg. To see how Kehl's getting on.

But never again as inhabitants.