Is it really wise for David Cameron to threaten us with migrants?

Is it really wise for David Cameron to threaten us with migrants? That is what he has done today with his warning that if we ‘leave’ the EU then the migrant camp in Calais could have to be moved to Folkestone, Dover, or our own back gardens. Not only is the claim wrong (our Calais arrangements are with France, not with the EU) it neatly shines a light on the biggest failure of his time in office.

The ‘jungle’ in Calais is currently home to around 5,000 people. They are there because the EU does almost nothing to control its external borders and made a principle of abolishing its internal borders (‘free movement of people’). As Nick Cohen noted in yesterday’s Observer, the people in the camp in Calais are economic migrants, not refugees, and as such they have no more right to be in the EU than anyone else in the world. They are there because they broke into the EU and now they are trying to break into Britain.

But let us say, notwithstanding last week’s ‘concession’ crumb from Brussels, that the British people do what David Cameron is trying to scare us into not doing, and vote to leave the EU. And let us say that the French and the British never again want to do business with each other, and the dreaded camp-dwellers of Calais are immediately shipped over to the South East of England.

How long would it take? Months? Weeks? Well, if we emptied the camp at Calais in a week and brought all the inhabitants here it would still be less than an average week’s immigration into the UK during David Cameron and Theresa May’s time in office. And even if that camp filled up again every single week then that still wouldn’t be worse than ‘managed migration’ under David Cameron and Theresa May.