The Brussels Times is one of those newspapers that
cater for English-speaking people in a country that has a large expat
community, a common and useful phenomenon. It has just started a weekly series
called Brussels Behind the Scenes, which we are told is “a weekly investigative newsletter by The
Brussels Times’ Samuel Stolton”. Well, that sounds interesting. There must be a
lot that goes on in Brussels that is never told in public. So, what do we have?
The first
article, dated 1 November 2019, is titled Call Me Boris. Yes, it’s about Boris
Johnson and starts by using a whole truckload of adjectives to evoke his time
as a journalist in the city:
A shock of blonde hair emerges through the doorway
and the face underneath becomes blushed, enveloped by the damp heat of the
room.
The man raises a plump, pink hand to his flaxen
locks and ruffles them, disturbing the subdued colours of this musty Irish pub.
Approaching the bar, a wry smile crawls over his face as heads, in mechanical
unison, turn in his direction. It is the early 1990s and the future Prime
Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, has entered Kitty O’Shea’s for a
lunchtime drink.
It is obvious that Sam
himself did not witness this scene almost 30 years ago. It is equally obvious
that this piece of “investigative journalism” required nothing more arduous
than trawling around the Brussels watering-holes in search of gossipy
reminiscences from those old-timers who did remember Johnson’s spell in the
city.
Sam’s second venture into the
risky genre of investigation was, in fact, even easier. All he was required to
do was to reproduce an anti-Spanish sob story originating from the Catalan
government’s propaganda department and masquerading as an interview with Meritxell Serret. She was the Catalan
Councillor for Agriculture at the time of the seditious coup in 2017 and she is
finding life on the run (“in exile” as the Catalan government puts it and Sam faithfully
copies) to be rather tedious. She feels abandoned. She did a bunk with Catalan
premier Puigdemont but gets no support from him because she is from ERC. Her
party has now fallen out with Puigdemont’s JxCat party, and she isn’t the
flavour of the month in ERC either because her own party leader Oriol Junqueras stayed in
Catalonia to face the music, spent two years on remand, and is now serving 13
years porridge for sedition. While she’s in Brussels eating mussels.
A sob
story we said, and we meant it literally. Sam’s purple prose style spares us no
mawkish thrill:
“I am fighting for the values of Europe –
integration, unity, diversity – these are also the principles of a free and
independent Catalonia. The European institutions act as guarantors of these
freedoms,” Serret tells me, when I ask her who she is doing all this for,
having sacrificed so much for the mirthless mope of the Belgian climate.
Tears begin to bud from Serret’s eyes. The alternative, she says, does
not bear thinking about. “To permit attitudes that support the imprisonment of
democrats and the repression of our political movement is much worse. In Spain,
this is too recent in our history to forget.”
There is
no need here to parse the whole article. The EU has made it clear consistently
that events in Catalonia are an internal matter for Spain and of no concern to
its institutions. We will simply quote one downright lie:
Serret cannot return to Spain, for now. She is reportedly wanted on a
charge of disobedience, an accusation that would normally not merit the issuing
of a European Arrest Warrant.
Sam’s article is dated 8
November. On 30 October the Spanish media reported that the Supreme Court had
decided not to proceed with an attempt to have her returned, precisely because the
only charge would be “desobediencia” (contempt of court) and those of her
comrades who had not scarpered had been sentenced to 20 months disbarment from
public office and a fine. In the circumstances, it would not be in the public
interest to proceed with the complexities of an EAW. It is still a lie of
course that she cannot return to Spain. There is absolutely nothing to stop her
doing so. Except the prospect of 20 months out of active politics and a fine.
So who is
Samuel Stolton, the Bob Woodward of the Brussels Times? For a start, the shallowness of
his knowledge of Spanish affairs is shown by his own remarkable admission of
naivety:
Last week, during a dinner with Spanish diplomats in Brussels and
naively assuming that the Catalan quandary could be a stimulating conversation
topic, I allotted the subject into our discussion. Indeed it was, but not in
the manner I had expected –yielding instead a wild and flippant response. “The
media has got it all wrong,” one diplomat said. “The separatists are fanatic extremists
– they are radicals.”
It goes without saying that
we are facing the old British problem, a belief that merely being British
confers a magical ability to understand the affairs of other countries and a
divine right to tell Johnny Foreigner what he is doing wrong.
Sam tells
us that he is:
the Digital Editor at the European news agency, Euractiv, and I cover issues ranging from
continental politics to global technology news. I have also written for The
Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Brussels Times and others.
Euractiv limits itself to:
Samuel Stolton writes on EU affairs in the fields of digital policy and
technology. He has a particular interest in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence
and digital regulation.
The collection of his
articles on the Euractiv site are almost exclusively to do with digital
technology. The few political articles are about Brexit. There is nothing about
Spain or any other European country.
His
Guardian work consists of three very short pieces all published in less than 24
hours between 17.00 GMT on 17 February and 12.30 GMT on 18 February 2018:
- 120 words praising a Serbian photographer
- 50 words puffing a bookshop in Cardiff
- 300 words giving Elon Musk a boost
Sources
(English)
The Brussels Times
Samuel Stolton’s
website
Euractiv
The Guardian
(Spanish)
Crónica Global
(What became of Meritxell Serret?)
El Periódico
(The
Spanish public prosecutor defers the claim against Marta Rovira as she has fled
to Switzerland)
