Passport to happiness

It’s interesting how relatively small things can bring great pleasure and throw much bigger things into focus.

On Monday I took delivery of my new passport. This is my fourth and I’d been without one for a couple of years. I had no intention of leaving the country and was waiting for the new, post-EU passports to be issued before getting a new one.

Each of my four passports has been different. My first was what I think of as a “proper” British passport and one of the last to be issued in 1988. Larger than the modern machine-readable versions the basic design had not changed since it was adopted in the 1920s, the hard midnight blue cover embossed with the royal arms gave a feeling of solidity, tradition and permanence.

It was on this passport that I made my one and (so far) only trip to the US and Canada. My next passport was very different. Smaller, the soft burgundy cover still had the simplified version of the royal arms used by the government. The change of colour did not bother me much, but the wording did. Here they are side by side.

Yup, you spotted it. The words “British Passport” had gone and at the very tippy top the words “European Community” had appeared. So, whatever else is said or shown on the cover, the overarching identity is there at the top. My third passport looked much the same but with another change. The Maastricht Treaty had changed the European Economic Community into the European Union, a new state in embryo. This change was reflected on the passport, and “European Community” was now “European Union”.

It was possible to buy covers in the traditional midnight blue, but folk rather missed the point, these “patriotic” covers still had the new EU wording on them! I never bothered with one, although a couple of my friends did get them. My comment was that it was better to be reminded of our status as a province of the EU and keep the anger hot.

When using the passport and coming through passport control at the airport there was something else that brought my blood to the boil. All EU “citizens” went through one channel and everyone else through the other. Having tp pass under an EU flag with French, German and other Europeans while Americans, Canadians, Aussies, Kiwis etc went the other was horrible, it felt unnatural. Once I went through what I thought of as the “free world” channel and got a ticking off.

Now I have my fourth passport, the very, very dark blue is back, the bold, proud words “British Passport” are back and the European title is gone. I had been looking forward to this, but I was surprised just how pleased I was once it arrived. I found myself getting it out and looking at it every now and then and grinning like a kid in a sweetshop. In a nice touch the back cover is embossed with the rose, thistle, shamrock and daffodil. Here it is.

Remaniacs have mocked those of use looking forward to the return to a blue British passport, but they (as always) miss the point. The whole Brexit business has dragged on so long, and so much emphasis has been placed on various subsidiary issues, it’s easy to lose sight of its fundamental significance. That little midnight blue book and, more importantly the golden words embossed in it, acted like a lens, giving clarity and focus. Leaving the EU means that the UK is once again free to make its own decisions (and yes, its own mistakes), it means we are not “EU citizens” anymore. It means, quite simply, we are a country again.