At the border between Ukraine and Poland, handwritten signs greet exhausted refugees staggering towards safety. Local people are coming out to offer not just words of welcome but practical help; beds in their own homes or lifts to anywhere refugees might have relatives, even if it’s hundreds of miles away. Car hire firms are making free vehicles available, while off-duty firefighters and teenage scouts help bewildered families at train stations. Eastern Europeans who lived through the cold war need no help grasping the magnitude of what is happening to their neighbours.
But they are not alone. Ireland scrapped visa requirements for Ukrainians as war broke out and the EU as a whole is expected to offer the right to settle for three years without applying for asylum. Contrast that compassion with Britain’s foot-dragging contribution to this particular war effort, which by the weekend had amounted to a tone deaf (and hastily deleted) tweet from immigration minister Kevin Foster suggesting refugees could always try to get fruit-picking jobs here, followed by a belated announcement from Boris Johnson that Ukrainians living in Britain could apply for some relatives to join them. The Scottish and Welsh administrations are itching to go further, and Priti Patel, the home secretary, suggested on Monday afternoon that the government could now create some form of “humanitarian route”, although offered little clarity about who might qualify. But having made the right early calls on economic sanctions and arming Ukraine, Johnson’s government clearly misjudged the public mood on refugees. He has underestimated British generosity now, just as he repeatedly underestimated the selflessness people would show during a pandemic. It’s an oddly revealing blind spot to have.
