British jobs are not just for British workers. That’s a good thing.

It’s just like old times isn’t it? A Labour government, economic catastrophe and now, wildcat strikes across the country. It serves the Prime Minister right too. His demagogic promise of “British jobs for British workers” has come back to bite him. And deservedly so.

Now, as it happens, I have some plenty of sympathy for the British contractors who have failed to win contracts at Total’s Lincolnshire refinery, but their anger would be more profitably directed at their own management. After all, it’s their own companies that have failed to win the work – presumably because they either can’t perform the work to the same standard or because it’s cheaper to bring in hundreds of workers from other EU countries even when those workers, we are told, are being paid the same as what British workers would have received for the work. Instead of striking they should be asking why this is the case.

In any case, in the larger scheme of things, the free movement of people within the EU has been one of the “European project’s” greatest, if still, for sure, incomplete, achievements.