Abbott, Australians and Oxford

Nothing reminds us of the historic links between England and Australia like an unsuccessful Ashes series. But arrive in Heathrow after a long-haul flight, as I did some months ago, and you quickly discover that those historic links seem more like ancient history. As the citizens of Germany, Italy and Poland are hurried through the priority processing of the European Union, the remainder are shuffled through to a village of the damned labelled “non-EU”. I had arrived, like nearly a quarter of all visitors to the UK, as a student. It appeared, from the size of the gathering queue, that most of those other students had arrived just moments before I did. It was some hours, and a round of unusually gruff questioning, before I pulled on my coat and dragged my suitcase onto the London streets. For an Australian with British forebears and an appreciation of the history of the Commonwealth it was a somewhat deflating experience, akin to returning to the house where you grew up to find that…