Migration

So long as the economy was at the top of the agenda, ‘Remain’ will have felt safe in the knowledge that ‘Leave’ could do little to win over the public’s trust. But today, the Prime Minister has his former aide and friend Steve Hilton to thank for bringing the issue of migration soaring back into the headlines. What’s particularly dangerous for the Government about what Steve Hilton had to say is his claim that the PM was directly told in 2012 that meeting the promise to bring net migration down to the ‘tens of thousands’ was impossible. Here’s what Steve Hilton told the Daily Mail: ‘We were told, directly and

Gordon Brown’s intervention in the EU referendum debate was meant to be all about putting forward the positive case for voting ‘Remain’. But not for the first time, the former Prime Minister appears to have fallen flat on his face over immigration. It wasn’t quite as bad as Brown’s Gillian Duffy moment in that he didn’t call anyone ‘bigoted’ for holding a view on migration. Instead, though, the message to those worried about migration was…you’re worrying about the wrong thing. Brown told John Humphrys on Today that: ‘The biggest problem is illegal immigration.’ So the essence of Brown’s message was not to speak to the many Labour voters who genuinely

The absence of an outline of a post-exit immigration regime is a serious gap in the Referendum debate. That need not be so. There is a fairly clear way ahead: to minimise disruption, while achieving control of numbers. The key element that needs to be controlled is migration for work (which accounts for the bulk of net EU migration). This could be sharply reduced if EU immigrants were subject to the same requirement for work permits as now currently apply to non-EU workers: the aim would be to reduce the overall scale of immigration without losing the economic benefit of highly skilled immigration. By doing this, net migration – 330,000

Ever since David Cameron declared he wanted to get net migration down to below 100,000 the migration figures have caused him a headache. Today’s are particularly sensitive given that they’re out just a day before the EU referendum purdah period starts. Confirming net migration more than three times Cameron’s supposed maximum, and half of the rise being EU nationals, the data will help the Brexiteers argue that we need to leave the EU to restore border control. The potency of this argument has resulted in a subtle shift in the Brexit campaigning strategy, which appears to have placed immigration (not the NHS or the economy) at the centre of their argument. The ONS release shows that net

I open a dusty binder and look at my yellowing Spectator articles from Poland, Germany and Russia in the dramatic 1980s. And here’s one from Brussels in 1986, suggesting that Britain was edging towards finding its role in the European Community. Ho ho. Back then, Charles Moore was the editor and I was the foreign editor of this magazine. He shared my passion for the liberation of eastern Europe, while becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the western European Community, but he let me make the case for it. Now, 30 years on, Charles and I stand on different sides of a historic national argument. This makes for a curious role reversal.

Quite naturally, those campaigning for Britain to leave the European Union have seized on today’s net migration figures as evidence that staying in won’t resolve voters’ concerns about immigration. Priti Patel has said that ‘the proposed deal will do nothing to reduce the level of immigration from the EU, and will leave unelected politicians in Brussels and judges from the EU court in control of our borders’. Liam Fox has decided to go further. He points out to Coffee House that it is impossible for David Cameron to both campaign for Britain to stay in the European Union and continue to commit to the net migration target – and that

Why is David Cameron having such trouble persuading Jean-Claude Juncker to give in to his minimal demands for EU reform? The Prime Minister pledged, in a Tory manifesto, to restrict welfare for migrants for the first four years they’re in Britain: not as an ‘emergency’, but as a matter of routine. He was returned with a majority, and under British democracy this means it ought to happen. If the Lords were to try to frustrate this, the PM would overrule them because it was a manifesto pledge, voted on by the public. Why accept a veto from the EU? But the polls show a clear lead for ‘in’ – a ComRes

Niall Ferguson wrote a piece recently comparing Europe’s situation to that of the Roman Empire during its late, decadent, sexual pervert days: Here is how Edward Gibbon described the Goths’ sack of Rome in August 410AD: “ … In the hour of savage licence, when every ­passion was inflamed, and every restraint was removed … a cruel slaughter was made of the ­Romans; and … the streets of the city were filled with dead bodies … Whenever the Barbarians were provoked by opposition, they ­extended the promiscuous massacre to the feeble, the innocent, and the helpless…”. Now, does that not describe the scenes we witnessed in Paris on Friday night?

Another day and another group of men from an unknown religion storm into a hotel shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’. This time in Mali. Once again they take hostages. And once again they free only those who can recite the Quran. Of course our Home Secretary Theresa May along with the President and Secretary of State in the U.S. will all say this has ‘Nothing to do with Islam.’ Or as Secretary Kerry said a couple of days back after the massacre in Paris. ‘It has nothing to do with Islam; it has everything to do with criminality, with terror, with abuse, with psychopathism – I mean you name it’. Indeed, so

Sweden, perhaps the most open country in the world, is on course to take almost 200,000 asylum seekers this year. Adjust for population size and that’s like the UK taking a refugee city the size of Birmingham. It can’t cope. Yet political refusal to admit this is incubating concern – sending voters towards the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrat parties. But most shockingly, a trend is emerging of attacks on immigrants. I look at this in my Daily Telegraph column today. [datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/qjCco/index.html”] Sweden’s government and opposition parties both dislike talking about immigration; they are too quick to dismiss concerns as xenophobia. In so doing, they hand voters on a plate to the Sweden Democrats – a party denounced