Who are you calling a xenophobe, Mr MacShane?
Anthony Browne The Spectator – Tuesday, August 24, 2004 Phew. At last our German-poetrytranslating, El Pais-reading, Francophonic, half-Polish Europe minister has explained who Eurosceptics are. They are, Mr Denis MacShane says, latent xenophobes and racists driven by a hatred of Germany and France that dates back to the second world war. As an immigrant living in Belgium, who is half Norwegian, a quarter Irish, an eighth French and an eighth English, with added cousins in Denmark and Italy, I now know I can’t be Eurosceptic. I can’t hate Europeans; I’m related to half of them. Mind you, an Italian plane did kill my grandfather on HMS Liverpool in 1940 as it sailed in the Mediterranean, and I still haven’t got a proper answer about that from my Italian relatives. The MacShane description doesn’t quite fit Nigel Farage, the leader in the European Parliament of the United Kingdom Independence party, who may be hung up on gory military history but is unlikely to be a Hun-hater. His wife,
