Postcard from Turin

Greetings from Turin where I am spending a couple of days updating my double bio on Cristiano and Leo.
Nothing like a quick hop over to the European mainland for a check on reality or as my spiritual mentor St Ignatius would put it ‘discernment’.
Flying in over the spectacular sweep of the snow covered Alps, I overheard some excited Brits exchanging tips about the best ski slopes. Arrival at the small but welcoming airport servicing north and southern Europe was a doddle. A charming policeman took me to on side and explained that I had forgotten to notify British Airways that I had lost my old British passport and was travelling with a new one, but not to worry there was ‘no problem.’ He waved me through as a -still-citizen of Europe.
Turin is a quiet clean yet solid city, without the chaos of Rome, Naples’s Camorra, or the Germanic stamp of Milan, its main economic power base-the Agnellis- not quite as enduring as its Baroque splendour , but now not only boasting Juventus but Messi’s only real contender among Europeans for the title of best player in the world.
Carlo, a youthful and genial Turin businessman and lifelong Juventus fan who trades aluminum throughout Europe with China , told me the player he had most loved was Carlitos Tevez not Ronaldo, and how proud he was of having two young relatives studying and working in London which he still believed in as one of the great capitals in the EU.
This morning the young self-assured woman who served me a superb double expresso under a sign in Italian proclaiming that caffeine helped kick star revolutions (did Gramsci say that, I wondered out loud, and she laughed ) told me that two of her friends were on a two day tourist trip to London and were hugely enjoying themselves.
Italians I meet have the courtesy not to raise the dreaded ‘B’ word but focus instead on positives, like good friends helping one out when one most is in need of it. I find myself telling them, ‘Don’t give up on us’, most of us still feel part of Europe.
It’s a message that seems to have been lost in the quagmire that Mrs May, and her allies in the DUP and the misnamed European Research Group (hard Brexiteers to a man and woman) have thrown us into.
And yet taking my double shot of Turin expresso these lines from my colleague Philip Stephens in today’s FT resonated with me: “Mrs May demands parliament respect ‘the will of the people’. Here, from the lips of a prime-minister, are the sentiments of a demagogue rather than a democrat. ‘The people’ are the 52 per cent who backed leaving the EU (although I would add a less than representative sample of those who should had the right to vote). She assumes they all want her version of Brexit. The 48 per cent behind Remain are ‘citizens of nowhere’ who deserve to be disenfranchised.”
Well, I know that Italy’s current government is hardly a bastion of libera democratic values. St Ignatius also advises never take critical decisiouns when you are in a dark mood. But as I breathed in the clear mountain air along the via Gramsci, I put Mrs May’s desolation road to one side, and looked forward to being back in London this saturday and joining many thousands, marching for a people’s vote, glimpsing the light through the darkness.