Allison Pearson, a 'star' columnist for the Daily Telegraph and author of novels such as I Don't Know How She Does It (made into a movie starring Sarah Jessica Parker, apparently), tweeted what, I suspect, absolutely no one else was thinking as news was still coming in this morning from the apparent suicide bombings at Brussels' Zaventem airport and Maelbeek metro station.
Well, I was somewhat wrong in this regard. To compound Pearson's incompassionate folly, UKIP's suburban golf club captain masquerading as a politician, Nigel Farage, then retweeted her ridiculous missive. Farage, however, was not alone amongst his swivel-eyed brethren, as UKIP's defence spokesperson in the European Parliament then issued the following hastily-written, typo-ridden statement:
As a British citizen living abroad for almost the last 17 years - 15 of them in two EU-member countries - I have my views on Britain's part in the "European project". But regardless of which way I would vote, most of my experience of living in the Netherlands and France has been positive.
Being in the Eurozone has allowed me to be paid in a currency that I can then spend easily elsewhere in the region; I've been able to drive on a Dutch driving licence in the UK, France, Italy and Spain without it bothering anyone; and I've been able to move from EU member country to another, and then another to work, live and benefit culturally from the experience, and hopefully make a positive contribution locally.
When the Schengen Agreement was signed in 1985 by Belgium, France, the-then West Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, Islamist terrorism was something that happened elsewhere. It was something you heard about on the news happening in Lebanon, the West Bank and other parts of the Middle East. The UK was more concerned with Irish terrorism in 1985 than jihad. Even the attempt by a nascent Al-Qaeda to blow up the World Trade Center in New York in February 1993 didn't seem to be placed by the media or the political world as coming from a wider, global terrorist agenda.
But that all changed on September 11, 2001. Because the world changed forever on that day. A chain of events that can be traced back to the British and French carve-up of the Arab lands after World War I, through World War II, the depths of the Cold War and Russia's invasion of Afghanistan in 1980, had all led, in one form or another, to 9/11. And in the decade and a half since, we have existed in an almost perpetual state of war in one region. Children have become teenagers in the belief that their country's soldiers only wear desert camouflage, that their armies only need one colour of paint for their vehicles.
However, that "region" soon became exported: to Madrid on March 11, 2004 and London on July 7, 2005. Just as terror was brought to New York and Washington in 2001, the war on and with terror was no longer 'just' a regional problem. For the last decade it has been an Indonesian problem, a Philippino problem, an Australian problem, a Turkish problem, a French problem, a German problem, a Swiss problem, an Italian problem, a Spanish problem, a British problem.
In Madrid in 2004, blame was eventually placed on an imported cell comprising Moroccans, Syrians and Algerians, but in London in 2005 the culprits were home-grown: three British-born sons of Pakistani origin and a fourth born in Jamaica but had been living in the UK since the age of five.
Ease of movement throughout Europe had had nothing to do with them. They'd come down from the north of England to deliver their gruesome carnage. Indeed in many subsequent plots in the UK since 7/7, terrorism and cells in other parts of continental Europe had barely been mentioned, though it would be foolish in the extreme to expect that jihadists in Belgium, Germany and elsewhere were not completely unconnected, more so with the rise of ISIS and the exodus of disaffected youths from these countries to join the murderous death cult in Iraq and Syria.
Events in Paris last November, and again in Brussels today, have underlined the ease of movement with which terrorists have in continental Europe, especially the example of Salah Abdeslam, who managed to evaid capture for four months only to be apprehended running out of an apartment just a couple of blocks from his family home in Molenbeek.
But to believe that locking down Britain and removing it politically and structurally from the European Union will in some how make the UK safe from all this is about as naive as it is possible to be. In 1997 Britain imposed one of the world's strictest firearms bans, but that hasn't stopped the flood of guns coming into the country and into the hands of criminals. And with the murder of Lee Rigby, we saw in bloodthirsty detail that a terrorist needs only a kitchen knife to create the desired effect. And very little passport control at all.
To politicise attacks like those this morning in Brussels, merely to drive the discussion about Britain's EU membership, is wholly wrong. And, anyway, if the UK wishes to be safe, better coordination and intelligence sharing amongst Europe's security services can only improve the chances of preventing the next attack. That doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the political and financial union of 28 states.
Just because you can acquire a Kalishnakov rifle in France and Belgium as easily as a daily newspaper doesn't make Britain any more or any less vulnerable. Just ask those who were on the Circle Line between Liverpool Street and Aldgate on July 7, 2005, or just outside Edgware Road station, or the Piccadilly Line between King's Cross and Russell Square, or on the number 30 bus at Tavistock Square.
More importantly, if you want to make a case for the UK leaving the European Union, don't be such an inconsiderate ghoul that you do so while the blood and scattered body parts of another bombing are still where they were cast by a suicide attacker. And, secondly, try and apply some fact-based reasoning: terrorism doesn't hold a passport.
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