I am sorry to have to say that I read the current UK news with a certain amount of Schadenfreude: industrial action on the railways, postal strikes just before Christmas, inflation (butter has gone up 80%), the decline in the value of Sterling, supreme court battles over the government of the country and so on. We are now finding out what many always knew: that the net advantages of remaining in Europe are very much greater than the financial subventions being paid to the EU.

And that is only the financial consequence. I am just as baffled by the British lack of vision for Europe as I am by all those flag-waving Americans cheering at the speeches of Donald Trump. As I wrote two years ago in my short story, Beyond Redemption: “Racism runs much deeper in our veins than we care to think.”

In the UK there was no debate before the referendum about the consequences of a Brexit to world peace, international democracy, human rights, the environment or the freedom of movement (the most fundamental freedom of all). No-one made the point that all relationships are costly in terms of time and money.

Instead, which David Cameron should have known, the decision was made at the mercy of the gutter press and an older generation who will not be alive to suffer its consequences, along with erroneous financial greed and the ugliest racism imaginable.

Enormous lies were plastered on the sides of buses by racist buffoons such as Boris Johnson, but he has now been made Foreign Secretary. As the German press asks, where is the integrity in that?

Since I was a student I have been such a pro-European that I would always say that I was a European when people asked me where I came from. And I still have a passion for Europe that I am not going to give up on. So my question is, where are the politicians in the UK that have a genuine vision for Europe? The best we had was Nick Clegg, but he stood down as a result of David Cameron’s somewhat unexpected, though short-lived, success at the last general election.

It is my firm hope that one day, we will have politicians with a vision and passion for Europe that goes way beyond the financial. Politicians who swap roles in each other’s nations for a few years. Women and men who can speak other European languages, who promote school and university exchanges between continents and nations, who embrace other cultures, who are prepared to invest time in international relationships. Reading the latest UK news (and I apologise to the people of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland for the London-centric nature of this blog entry), I think this my be some time away, don’t you?