John Major and Nicolas Sarkozy are grandees of their respective centre-right parties. But the days when the Conservatives and the Republicans dominated the political landscape of Britain and France are long gone. The fortunes of both parties have dwindled as the migrant crisis has deepened. Neither the Tories nor the Republicans confronted the phenomenon with the courage that their electorate demanded. They paid the price at the ballot box.
But while one grandee has woken up to this fact, the other remains in denial.
Major’s recent interview with the BBC underlined his misreading of the crisis confronting Europe. The former Tory PM, who governed the country between 1992 and 1997, spoke sympathetically of the vast numbers of migrants crossing dangerous waters to reach the continent, and he scolded a society that ‘has come to regard immigration as an ill.’
Sarkozy has a different take on the crisis. ‘Immigration is a problem,’ he explained in an interview this week, returning to a theme he had first broached 12 months ago. On that occasion he quoted UN figures to warn that between now and 2050 the population of Africa will increase from 1.3 to 2.5 billion people, half of whom will be under the age of 20. ‘This huge population is the neighbour of a European continent in demographic decline,’ said Sarkozy. ‘Alas, the migrant crisis hasn’t really begun.’
Sarkozy reiterated those figures this week and again issued a warning that Europe’s future was at stake if it didn’t act. ‘Borders are a guarantee of peace,’ he said. ‘It’s when borders are indecisive, when they are contested, that there are risks of war.’
He advocates a root and branch reform of the EU’s approach to tackling the migrant crisis in order to meet this challenge, and he also said Europe ‘must take steps to enable Africanpopulations to remain, for the most part, on the soil of the countries that are theirs’.
Twenty years ago Sarkozy – then a minister in Jacques Chirac’s government – shared the prevailing view among the Paris elite that immigration was, in his own words, ‘an opportunity for our country’. On Monday he declared that ‘immigration is not an opportunity, either for the migrants we can’t decently accommodate, or for the French.’
It is the sheer numbers that have changed Sarkozy’s mind. Since Emmanuel Macron came to power in 2017, legal and illegal immigration have reached record levels. On average around 275,000 residence permits a year have been issued to non-European immigrants under Macron’s reign, a 26 per cent increase on François Hollande’s presidency and 45 per cent more than when Sarkozy was in the Elysée from 2007 to 2012.
One result of this unprecedented influx has been a rise in crime and insecurity, as Macron himself acknowledged in 2022, admitting that one in two crimes in Paris were committed by foreigners.
The brutal murder in Paris a fortnight ago of a 19-year-old student by an illegal immigrant who had already been convicted of rape prompted Sarkozy to make his intervention. It was time to finally act, he said, and in particular to break the moral stranglehold imposed by the left on the subject of immigration. ‘As soon as someone wants to do something, they’re immediately accused of being somewhere between Hitler and Laval,’ he said, referencing Pierre Laval, the fascist prime minister of France during the Vichy years.
This a smear used by the left in Europe generally, as Giorgia Meloni and Suella Braverman can testify.
The latest figure to be depicted as a dangerous fascist is the new Interior Minister, Bruno Retailleau, whom Sarkozy made a point of endorsing on Monday.
Retailleau is a Catholic and a conservative, and as such he talks like one. Declaring multiculturalism to have reached a ‘dead end’ in a recent interview, Retailleau said: ‘Our culture is Judeo-Christian. The French melting pot was created in Jerusalem, Athens and Rome. It’s a unique civilisation.’
Retailleau reiterated his determination to slash illegal and legal immigration, increase the number of deportations and, if necessary, amend existing laws to achieve this objective. He also expressed his support for a referendum on immigration.
The left have charged Retailleau with rhetoric straight from the mouth of Marine Le Pen and one of her National Rally MPs cheerfully admitted that Retailleau did indeed sound like their spokesman.
But Retailleau isn’t so much speaking for the National Rally as for the French nation. Two thirds support the idea of a referendum on immigration and a similar number agree with Sarkozy that immigration is no longer beneficial for France.
‘I was appointed [Interior Minister] to respond to a majority demand of the French people: to restore order, in terms of both security and immigration,’ Retailleau declared. ‘We must listen to this message and respond to it.’ Then, in a signal that he has the full support of Michel Barnier, a fellow Republican, Retailleau promised: ‘I’ll tell them the truth, as the Prime Minister has asked.’
The four candidates vying to be the new leader of the Conservative party should draw inspiration from Retailleau and Sarkozy. This century the left have dominated the discussion on immigration, deploying what Sarkozy once described as ‘intellectual terrorism’ to silence any dissent. In France the Republican party is finally fighting back, and it may yet save them from extinction.
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