Abstract
Immigration was one of the main issues in the referendum. To advance the case for Brexit, the press stoked up dissatisfaction at the increase in EU migrants with exaggerated stories of benefits tourism, undercutting of wages, crime and terrorism. This chapter first details the state of immigration into the UK before the referendum. Net migration was running at around 300,000 a year, roughly half-and-half from inside and outside the EU. The climate of opinion towards immigration in Britain was mainly one of tolerant coexistence but with grievances being expressed in areas undergoing acute surges. The chapter describes the 2015–16 European migrant crisis and the EU’s stumbling response salvaged by Angela Merkel. Finally, the exploitation of the migration issue by the press is documented with examples, and the chapter concludes by presenting the main issues for immigration policy after Brexit.
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- 1.
Office of National Statistics. 2018. Overview of the UK population. November 2018.
- 2.
Office of National Statistics. 2018. Annual Population Survey 2018; see also The Economist. 2018. Enoch Powell, race and migration—Fifty years down-river. 21 April.
- 3.
Davidson, Ruth. 2017. Daily Telegraph . 8 August.
- 4.
Migration Observatory . 2018. Impact of migration on UK population growth. 24 January. Past migration also influences natural change (difference in births over deaths).
- 5.
Financial Times . 2017. May renews pledge to lower immigration below 100,000. 9 May.
- 6.
Migration Observatory . 2018. Net migration in the UK. 24 August.
- 7.
The ONS had forecast that only 5000–13,000 would arrive each year.
- 8.
The Economist. 2017. Immigration: Return journey. 16 September; Clegg, Nick. 2017. Squaring the Brexit circle on freedom of movement. Financial Times . 4 July; The Guardian. 2015. How immigration came to haunt Labour: the inside story. 24 March.
- 9.
The Economist. 2017. Immigration: Return journey. 16 September.
- 10.
Financial Times . 2016. City urges ‘open’ philosophy on immigration. 5 October; The Economist. 2018. Enoch Powell, race and integration: Fifty years down-river. 21 April.
- 11.
Sproul, David. 2017. Best and brightest must be welcome post-Brexit. Daily Telegraph . 27 June; Financial Times. 2017. 26 May.
- 12.
Daily Telegraph . 2017. Hunt: keeping EU workers in NHS is top priority. 16 June.
- 13.
London Evening Standard . 2017. East Europeans vital to UK economy, says ONS report. 10 July.
- 14.
In a letter to the Daily Telegraph published on 13 April 2017 a reader sarcastically notes that with an 86% activity rate among EU migrants aged 16–64, compared with 75% for the UK population as a whole, the latter rate will surely drop once “all those lazy EU migrants are sent home.”
- 15.
Daily Telegraph . 2017. Officials lose quarter of a million migrants each year. 16 June.
- 16.
Migration Observatory . 2018. Net migration in the UK. 24 August; Financial Times. 2017. UK business fears labour crunch as Europeans head home. 26 May; Daily Telegraph. 2017. Eastern Europeans shun UK after Brexit vote. 26 May; Evans-Pritchard, Ambrose. 2017. Migration is yesterday’s concern now eastern Europe is booming. Daily Telegraph. 6 July.
- 17.
Financial Times . 2017. Homeward bound: Polish ministers predict a rush of returnees. 26 April.
- 18.
MacShane, Denis. 2017. Brexit, No Exit: Why (In the End) Britain Won’t Leave Europe, 199. London: Bloomsbury; reader’s letter to Financial Times, 26 October 2017; interview with Gordon Ramsay. Daily Telegraph . 2017. 10 October.
- 19.
MacShane, ibid., 196–199.
- 20.
Financial Times . 2017. Reader’s letter: CEE suffers as EU skims off its best and brightest. 6 July.
- 21.
Clarke , Harold D., Matthew Goodwin and Paul Whiteley. 2017. Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- 22.
The Economist . 2018. 21 April, op. cit.
- 23.
See Hirsch. Afua. 2018. Brit(ish). On Race, Identity and Belonging, 25, 119–125. London: Vintage; and the comments of the ex-Liverpool and England footballer John Barnes on BBC 1’s Question Time of 21 February 2019 about Liam Neeson’s confession of feelings of racial hatred.
- 24.
Heath, Allister. 2017. Daily Telegraph. The Conservatives must not let Britain’s jobs miracle turn sour. 18 May; Financial Times. 2017. May renews pledge to lower immigration target to below 100,000. 3 May.
- 25.
The Guardian. 2015. 6 October, editorial. See also letter from Dr David Webster to the Financial Times . 2017. 15 November, saying that large-scale and sudden migration flows can destabilize a country socially and politically.
- 26.
The Time s . 2017. May forced to weaken key target on migrants. 20 April, and 2018. Pressure on May over ‘migrant’ students. 3 January.
- 27.
The Economist. 2018. Identity crisis. 5 May; Ganesh, Janan. 2018. Measured May succumbs to tawdry migrant pose. Financial Times. 24 April. A “dehumanized” approach towards immigration enforcement continued under Mrs May’s own government, illustrated by the “Windrush” scandal and rushed deportation decisions that were frequently overturned on appeal: Financial Times. 2018. Union hits out at ‘dehumanised’ Home Office approach to migration. 18 May; The Economist. 2018. Bagehot: A hostile environment. 28 April; Helsingin Sanomat. 2018. Heti ulos Britianniasta, jossa asuit 50 vuotta (“Get out of Britain, where you’ve lived for 50 years”). 21 April.
- 28.
Migration Advisory Committee . 2018. EEA Migration in the UK: Final Report. September.
- 29.
Ibid., Executive Summary, paras 17 and 25.
- 30.
Ibid., Executive Summary, paras 22–23.
- 31.
Ibid., Executive Summary, para. 24.
- 32.
Ibid., Executive Summary, para. 20.
- 33.
Ibid., Executive Summary, paras 26–28.
- 34.
Ibid., Executive Summary, para. 18.
- 35.
Ibid., Executive Summary, paras 7–8. See also Brown, Gordon. 2016. Britain: Leading, not Leaving: The Patriotic Case for Remaining in Europe, 260–261. Selkirk: Deerpark Press.
- 36.
Migration Advisory Committee . 2018. EEA Migration in the UK: Final Report. September, Introduction, paras 23–24.
- 37.
Speech to the Conservative party conference , 5 October 2015.
- 38.
See Chap. 5, Sect. 5.3.4.
- 39.
For example, the European Globalization Adjustment Fund, see UK Government. 2013. Review of Balance of Competences, Cohesion Policy, paras 132–133. Whether the new EU Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund will fare any better in Britain remains to be seen. At least it has been publicized: Gov.UK website, 19 December 2018.
- 40.
Kaufmann, Eric. 2018. Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities. London: Allen Lane.
- 41.
Goodhart, David. 2017. The Road to somewhere: The populist revolt and the future of politics. London: Hurst; also Goodhart, David. Financial Times. 2016. May promises a bit more state and a little less ‘anything goes’. 10 October, and Daily Telegraph . 2016. Britain won’t heal its divisions as long as the clever are too powerful. 11 October. See also Luce, Edward. Financial Times. 2017. 6 July.
- 42.
Dr Anna Rowlands and Shelina Janmohamed on BBC- Radio 4, Sunday, 30 December 2018, special edition on immigration and religion.
- 43.
The Economist. 2016. Integration nation. 21 May. Daily Telegraph . 2017. Editorial: UK is a good place to be an immigrant. 11 October.
- 44.
Freedland, Jonathan. 2017. The Road to Somewhere by David Goodhart—a liberal’s right-wing turn on immigration. The Guardian. 22 March; Taylor, Paul. 2018. How Britain made me a citizen of nowhere. Politico. 16 May; Ganesh, Janan. Financial Times . 2018. Measured May succumbs to tawdry migration pose. 24 April; letter of Dimitris Vayenas to Financial Times, 29 June 2017, hoping “that [the UK] will not sacrifice its noblest of values and most precious—albeit impossible to quantify—assets, such as soft power, on the altar of transient populism and pettiness.” See also O’Toole, Fintan. 2018. Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain, 148. New York: Apollo.
- 45.
Moore, Charles. 2017. This country has come through many a crisis, but this one is a true shemozzle. Daily Telegraph . 24 June.
- 46.
Pearson, Allison. 2017. Daily Telegraph . 24 June. Whether all these nurses back in the good old days of 1972 were all British-born is another question, however: many were immigrants from the Windrush generation. But at least they were not all called Magda and from Riga!
- 47.
As in its editorial of 11 October 2017: UK is a good place to be an immigrant .
- 48.
See Daily Telegraph . 2018. Million new EU citizens get UK rights. 10 April. The article reported that a total of 995,000 immigrants had been granted the citizenship of EU member countries in 2016. Some 90% of them were from non-EU countries or were stateless. For 150,000 of the new EU citizens the citizenship they had been granted was that of the UK, so presumably they were already living in Britain. Certainly, the remainder granted the citizenship of other EU countries had thereby acquired the freedom of movement right to live and work in the UK. But that they would do so was no more likely than that the 440 million original inhabitants of the other 27 member states would come to Britain.
- 49.
Davidson, Ruth. 2017. It is time to give the British people a mature debate on immigration. Daily Telegraph . 8 August.
- 50.
Evans-Pritchard, Ambrose. 2017. Migration is yesterday’s concern—now eastern Europe is booming. Daily Telegraph . 6 July; Heath, Allister. 2017. The Conservatives must not let Britain’s job miracle turn sour. Daily Telegraph. 18 May. See also Daily Telegraph editorial, 11 October 2017, referred to above.
- 51.
The Economist . 2018. Bagehot: A hostile environment. 28 April.
- 52.
Individual journalists, however, have not shrunk from raising sensitive issues, for example Islamisation: Melanie Phillips, the Mail and Times columnist, in her 2007 book. Londinistan: How Britain is Creating a Terror State Within. New York: Encounter Books.
- 53.
Mail Online. 2014. Your benefits system is crazy. 14 February; Daily Express . 2014. Kick out all foreign benefit cheats. 28 August; The Sun. 2013. EU are kidding—Brussels: UK’s 600,000 benefit tourists is no problem. 21 October. The Sun subsequently issued a correction to this story admitting that the 600,000 figure was wrong; its editor said that the paper was pro positive immigration—its chairman Rupert Murdoch was an immigrant: see The Guardian. 2013. Sun benefits tourism gaffe may have resulted from a subbing error! 13 November.
- 54.
Migration Observatory . 2014. Costs and ‘Benefits’: Benefits tourism, what does it mean? 21 February.
- 55.
Mail Online. 2016. Curbing benefits paid to EU workers is unlikely to lead to a dramatic reduction in migration, a report claims today. 4 May.
- 56.
Migration Watch UK’s announcements, like those of the Brexit tabloids and UKIP, sensationalize the issue, such as its warning that a million EU nationals could come to Britain during a two-year transition period (Financial Times. 2018. 1 February), or that current rates of migration are equivalent to having to build a city the size of Birmingham every four years. The Migration Advisory Committee put the latter figure into perspective by saying it is the same as two extra people coming to live on a 100-person street over a period of five years (Migration Advisory Committee. 2018. EEA Migration in the UK: Final Report. September, Introduction, para. 21).
- 57.
In 2016, the AfD adopted an explicitly anti-Islam policy, BBC News. 2016. 1 May, taking over from the popular “Pegida” (“Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West”) movement in eastern Germany: BBC News. 2015. 6 January; Financial Times . 2015. The Pegida people are reshaping German politics. 16 February. In the September 2017 general elections AfD became the third-biggest party in the Bundestag with 92 seats: Financial Times. 2017. A test of compassion. 20 September, and 2017. Wrath of the eastern periphery. 30 September.
- 58.
See The Economist. 2015. Terror and Islam, 24. 17 January. Nigel Farage has been accused of hate speech by a Roma MEP: Observer. 2014. 22 June. In 2018 UKIP, under their new leader Gerard Batten, veered towards an anti-Islam position, adopting a policy similar to Trump’s of screening all Muslim immigrants for Islamic extremism: Sky News. 2018. 21 September. The former far-right English Defence League activist Tommy Robinson had become associated with the party: BBC News. 2018. 23 November. Nigel Farage has since left the party and founded a new one, the “Brexit Party .”
- 59.
The Guardian. 2018. Sayeeda Warsi calls for inquiry into islamophobia in Conservative party. 4 July.
- 60.
BBC News . 2016. Refugees at highest ever level, reaching 65m, says UN. 20 June.
- 61.
Eurostat, Asylum Statistics.
- 62.
BBC News . 2016. Some 885,000 migrants crossed from Turkey to Greece and 150,000 from Libya to Italy. 20 June.
- 63.
The Economist. 2016. Special Report on Migration, 7. 28 May. See also Kingsley, Patrick. 2017. The new Odyssey: the story of Europe’s refugee crisis . London: Guardian Faber.
- 64.
The Economist. 2016. Special Report on Migration, 3. 28 May, and 2015. Charlemagne: Best served cold. 10 October. However, the EU had made proposals in reaction to warning signs as early as 2010: EU Commission , IP/11/532.
- 65.
According to the UNHCR in 2014 170,000 refugees arrived in Italy but only 43,300 in Greece: UNHCR. 2015. The sea route to Europe: The Mediterranean passage in the age of refugees. 1 July.
- 66.
For example, in Croatia, Financial Times . 2015. Growing migrant crisis threatens to raise old ghosts of Balkan wars. 6 November. The acts of kindness of the ordinary population of Hungary towards the refugees contrasted with the hard-heartedness of their government.
- 67.
BBC News. 2016. Schengen: Controversial EU free movement deal explained. 25 January. Controls were also reintroduced on the Denmark-Sweden border: The Economist . 2015. Charlemagne: Bridge of sneers. 5 December.
- 68.
Thousands of migrants were camped on the northern border with Macedonia, which had erected a fence to stop people crossing, and on the island of Lesbos there was no medical treatment for newly arrived refugees who were sick including babies, women and young children: BBC News. 2015. Migrant crisis: Greece denies Schengen threat from EU. 3 December; Financial Times . 2016. Europe turns its back on Greece over refugees (editorial). 29 February.
- 69.
Reuters. 2017. Asylum requests in Austria more than halved in 2016. 15 January. See also BBC News. 2016. Migrant crisis: Austria’s Plan B to cap influx of refugees. 21 January, and Financial Times. 2016. Brussels criticizes Austria for capping asylum applications . 19 February.
- 70.
Financial Times . 2015. Schäuble warns of refugee ‘avalanche.’ 13 November; The Economist. 2016. Charlemagne: An ill wind. 23 January; The Guardian. 2017. Germany: Merkel agrees to 200,000 refugee cap in bid to build coaltion. 9 October.
- 71.
The Economist. 2015. Europe’s boat people. 25 April. In April, 800 boat people were drowned off Libya in a single incident. It was claimed that the scaling down in search and rescue efforts after the replacement of the Italian Mare Nostrum scheme by the more limited Triton operation run by the EU border agency Frontex had contributed to the increase in deaths. Some EU member states including Britain had been against expanding search and rescue operations on the ground that they encouraged people to risk the dangerous crossing. See also Financial Times . 2015. EU migration chief urges member states to share burden of refugees. 6 May.
- 72.
BBC’s Europe editor Katya Adler’s dispatches on the migrant crisis posted on BBC News voiced her frustration at the inability of the EU to act quickly to prevent severe hardship being suffered by refugees on their journey and to provide relief to national authorities bearing the brunt of the influx while other countries looked away. See, for example, 16 June 2015, “EU solidarity damaged by splits on migrants and Greece;” 19 October 2015, “Long winter ahead for migrant crisis;” 27 February 2016, “Why Europe is in a ‘Scream’.” The frustration was justified but unfortunately the underdeveloped legal framework limited the EU’s means of action. Appealing to member states’ good will or trying to knock heads together in such a situation is not always enough. See The Economist. 2015. Charlemagne: A walk down solidarity street. 13 June.
- 73.
See Financial Times . 2015. Big read: Migration. Barbed rhetoric. 27 November.
- 74.
France stood aside, for fear of attack by Marine Le Pen of the anti-immigrant National Front party: The Economist. 2015. Charlemagne: The dispensable French. 7 November. It took only 24,000 migrants.
- 75.
Britain has an opt-out from the Justice and Home Affairs provisions of the Lisbon Treaty which covers asylum policy. However, it has opted into the “Dublin rules” which lay down the principle that the country in which an asylum seeker first enters EU territory is responsible for dealing with his asylum application and that other countries to which the asylum seeker makes an asylum request can return him to the first country. With most asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa entering the EU through southern Europe by land or sea, the Dublin rule reduces the number of applications the UK needs to deal with. Since 2003 the UK has been able to return 12,000 migrants to other EU countries by virtue of the “Dublin rule”: BBC News. 2016. Cameron faces refugee ‘burden’ battle as EU draws up new scheme. 20 January.
- 76.
In May 2015 the Commission issued a “European Agenda on Migration ,” and in May and June 2016 two further packages of legislative proposals to advance the “Common European Asylum System” (CEAS). See the useful guide in European Parliament. 2019. Fact Sheets on the European Union, Asylum Policy; see also European Commission. 2018. Managing Migration: Possible areas for agreement at the June European Council. June.
- 77.
BBC News. 2015. Mediterranean migrant crisis: EU to hold emergency summit. 23 April; European Council. 2015. Special meeting on Mediterranean, 23 April 2015; The Economist. 2015. Briefing: Europe’s boat people. 25 April.
- 78.
In 2018 the assumption of power by a new government in Italy brought the situation in the central Mediterranean back into the limelight, with the populist interior minister from the anti-immigrant League party Matteo Salvini refusing to let rescue ships dock in Italy and calling for migrant processing centres away from Italy. BBC News. 2018. Migrant crisis: Mediterranean crossings deadlier than ever—UNHCR. 3 September.
- 79.
The Economist . 2015. Charlemagne: Small boats, choppy seas. 16 May.
- 80.
COM (2015) 490 final. See Financial Times . 2015. Juncker plan on migrants deserves full backing (editorial). 10 September.
- 81.
European Commission. 2015. Western Balkans Migrant Route. 25 October. Financial Times. 2015. Growing migrant crisis threatens to raise old ghosts of Balkan wars. 6 November.
- 82.
European Council, meeting of 28–29 June, 2018, Conclusions. In defence of quotas Daniel Gros, Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels, letter to Financial Times, 29 September 2015. The Economist was sceptical of the quota plan because the numbers of migrants to be relocated were irrelevant seen against the total scale of arrivals and not worth the bad blood they were causing: The Economist. 2015. Charlemagne: Small boats, choppy seas. 16 May; 2015. Charlemagne: The birth-pangs of a policy. 25 July; 2015. Charlemagne: Point taken, Mr Orban. 26 September; 2016. Special Report on Migration, 16. 28 May.
- 83.
European Parliament. 2018. Briefing: ‘Hotspots’ at EU external borders. June 14. In response to the refusal of the new Italian government that took office in May 2018 to accept asylum seekers arriving from Africa, the European Council at a meeting on migration on 28–29 June 2018 agreed to the idea of member states setting up “controlled centres” on a voluntary basis, which unlike the “hotpots” would be enclosed. For the same purpose, the European Council also agreed to explore the possibility of EU-funded “regional disembarkation platforms” in North Africa: European Council, meeting of 28–29 June 2018. See The Economist. 2018. Charlemagne: For those in peril on the sea. 15 September.
- 84.
A three-year €700m package: The Economist . 2016. 5 March.
- 85.
EU Commission, EU Regional Trust Fund in Response to Syrian Crisis , 17 December 2018. A letter to The Economist from a reader in Beirut compared the situation of Lebanon hosting a number of refugees equivalent to a third of its previous population with the infinitely better resourced Europe struggling to take a million, 0.2% of the population. See also Peter Sutherland, UN Special Representative for International Migration and former member of the EU Commission and director-general of the WTO, Financial Times. 2016. Europe has turned a tragedy into a needless political crisis. 22 May.
- 86.
The Economist. 2016. Special Report Migration, 13. 28 May; Financial Times . 2016. Leaders pledge billions in aid to alleviate migration crisis. 5 February; BBC News. 2017. Who really gives the most to help Syria? 10 February.
- 87.
European Council, 18 March 2016, EU-Turkey statement, press release 144/16. The Economist. 2016. A messy but necessary deal. 12 March; 2016. All quiet on the Aegean front. 16 April; 2016. Visa liberalization: Europe’s murky deal with Turkey. 28 May; BBC News. 2016. EU-Turkey migrant deal: A Herculean task. 18 March. Critical: BBC News. 2016. Turkey has EU over a barrel. 17 March; and letter from Alan Sked, former leader of UKIP, to Financial Times. 2016. 22 March.
- 88.
See European Commission, EU-Turkey Statement. Two years on, April 2018. However, child labour is widespread, Financial Times. 2017. A day on the factory floor for a young refugee. 20 September, and the amount of aid provided for education is tiny by western standards: BBC News. 2017. Who really gives the most to help Syria? 10 February. The living conditions of migrants on the Greek islands in 2016 were hardly better: The Guardian. 2016. Pope follows thousands of volunteers to Greek island at frontline of migrant crisis. 16 April; The Guardian. 2016. Greek islands feel the heat in Europe’s migrant crisis. 29 August.
- 89.
Turkey still does not meet a number of conditions that the EU set, in particular amendment of its restrictive anti-terrorism law introduced after a failed coup attempt in 2016. It is feared that Turks, or Syrians that have acquired Turkish passports, could enter the EU without visas and then apply for asylum. The Economist. 2016. Visa liberalization: Europe’s murky deal with Turkey. 28 May; Financial Times. 2016. Turkey faces tough obstacles in EU visa talks. 2 May.
- 90.
Council of the European Union , General Affairs meeting on 26 June 2018.
- 91.
European Commission, International Cooperation and Development, EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa ; BBC News. 2015. Migrant crisis: Swedish border checks introduced. 12 November.
- 92.
EU External Action, EU-Libya Relations, 9 November 2018. BBC News. 2017. Migrant crisis : EU summit seeks action plan with Libya. 3 February.
- 93.
The Economist. 2015. Forward defence: How Spain deals with migrants. 17 October; The Economist, 2016. Special Report Migration, 16. 28 May.
- 94.
Council of the European Union , press release 20 February 2019 announcing finalization of the legislation in the Council of Ministers and the start of negotiations with the Parliament. Cf. original proposal, Financial Times. 2015. Brussels plans new force to police external borders. 11 December; The Economist. European borders: A real border guard at last. See also Soros, George. By failing to help refugees Europe fails itself. Financial Times. 2015. 27 July.
- 95.
See European Commission, State of the Union 2018, A reinforced European Agency for Asylum, 12 September 2018. See also George Soros, op. cit.
- 96.
Since 2010 Sweden, Germany and the UK had in practice not been returning asylum seekers to Greece because of the unsatisfactory conditions there and national courts in most member states and the European Court of Human Rights had accepted appeals against planned returns to Greece: Financial Times. 2010. Migrant crisis in Greece strains EU open borders. 21 December, and 2011. EU migration: Asylum can test policy on borders. 22 January. See also Helsingin Sanomat . 2013. EU:lta puuttuu maahanmuuttolinja (“EU lacks migration policy”). 25 August.
- 97.
Readings from Hans Rosling (Rosling, Hans. 2018. Factfulness: Ten reasons we’re wrong about the world and why things are better than you think. London: Sceptre, Hodder and Stoughton.) on BBC Radio 4 , 2–6 April 2018.
- 98.
Were it to stay in the EU, the UK would be faced with the difficult choice of agreeing to the reformed Dublin rules, involving compulsory quotas in some circumstances but possibly retaining the right to deport asylum seekers arriving elsewhere, or opting out of the new Dublin rules completely, which would mean losing its present right of deportation which it uses extensively. Since 2003 the UK has been able to return 12,000 migrants to other EU countries by virtue of the “Dublin rule”: BBC News. 2016, Cameron faces refugee ‘burden’ battle as EU draws up new scheme. 20 January. See also Financial Times. 2016. Brussels plans radical asylum overhaul. 7 March, and 2016. Dublic regulation: EU states face charge for refusing to take refugees. 4 May. The UK has sometimes invoked the “Dublin rule” to keep migrants out of the UK even when they have relatives in Britain: Daily Telegraph . 2016. Calais migrants can join siblings in UK. 27 January.
- 99.
Countries belonging the Schengen area—that is, all EU Member States except the UK, Ireland, Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia, but including the non-EU countries Norway and Switzerland—no longer carry out checks on persons crossing the border to another country within the Schengen area.
- 100.
The Economist. 2015. Europe starts putting up walls. 19 September; 2015. After Paris, drawbridges up? 19 September; Financial Times. 2015. Europe heads for jam over loss of passport-free travel. 27 November; BBC News. 2015. Paris attacks: The crisis of Europe’s borders. 18 November.
- 101.
Financial Times . 2015. Merkel studies lessons of past influx to integrate newcomers. 18 September; The Economist. 2015. Integrating refugees in Europe: More toil, less trouble. 12 December; 2015. German immigration: All down the line. 19 December; 2016. Educating refugees: Learning the hard way. 2 January; 2016. The economic impact of refugees: For good or ill. 23 January; and 2016. Special Report Migration, 8–10. 28 May; Financial Times. 2015. German employers pessimistic about the chances of finding work for low-skilled refugees. 27 November; BBC News. 2015. How one city in Germany is coping. 10 November.
- 102.
Guardian Weekly. 2016. Refugee crisis : Dial down the rhetoric. 29 January.
- 103.
Financial Times . 2015. Arson raises fears of upsurge in anti-refugee prejudice. 13 April; 2016. Welcome wears thin. 30 July; 2017. Nearly 10 attacks a day on migrants in Germany. 29 February; The Economist. 2015. Is Tröglitz everywhere?. 18 April; 2016. Integration panic. 20 August; 2016. Attack in Berlin: The spectre of terror. 24 December.
- 104.
The Economist. 2015. Briefing: Terror and Islam. 17 January; 2015. Anti-immigrant populism: The march of Europe’s little Trumps. 12 December; 2016. Special Report Migration, 6. 28 May; Financial Times. 2016. Hard-headed humanity can save Merkel. 29 January, in which Philip Stephens speaks of the danger of leaders appearing to have lost control of events, when refugees can come to be equated with terrorists. Readmission agreements with the countries of failed asylum seekers are part of gaining control and regaining confidence: The Economist. 2015. Charlemagne: The birth-pangs of a policy. 25 July.
- 105.
BBC News. 2019. Crossing Divides: Has the UK changed its mind on immigration? 4 March.
- 106.
Which it was according to the former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, see BBC News. 2015. Ex-Australian PM Abbott tells Europe to close borders. 28 October.
- 107.
TIME, 21 December 2015.
- 108.
The Economist . 2015. The indispensable European. 7 November.
- 109.
For example, Collier, Paul. 2016. Merkel’s open door has harmed those it was meant to help. Financial Times . 5 February, and Münchau, Wolfgang. 2016. The EU sells its soul to strike a deal with Turkey. 21 March.
- 110.
Rachman, Gideon. 2016. Merkel’s power is unravelling across Europe. Financial Times . 15 March.
- 111.
Paul Collier, op. cit.
- 112.
The Economist . 2015. Charlemagne: Refugee realpolitik. 24 October.
- 113.
Financial Times . 2015. Do not blame Merkel for the refugees. 2 October.
- 114.
The Economist. 2015. Exodus, and Charlemagne: Leading from the front. 12 September; 2015. The indispensable European. 7 November; 2016. Briefing: Europe’s migrant crisis: “Only Mrs Merkel appears to think beyond the constraints of national politics.” 6 February. See also BBC News. 2015. 8 October, reporting Mrs Merkel’s address to the European Parliament, in which she called on everyone to “see immigrants as people.”
- 115.
Krastev, Ivan. 2016. Fear and loathing of a world without borders. Financial Times . 7 April, an argument similar to those of Kaufmann and Goodhart. Krastev, Ivan. 2017. After Europe. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
- 116.
Sutherland, Peter. 2015. Europe has turned a tragedy into a needless political crisis. Financial Times. 22 May; and The Economist. 2015. Exodus. 12 September.
- 117.
The Economist. 2015. Migration and labour markets: More vacancies than visitors. 19 September; Financial Times . 2015. EU claims refugee influx will boost growth. 20 November.
- 118.
BBC News . 2017. Who really gives most to help Syria? 10 February.
- 119.
BBC News . 2016. Cameron faces refugee burden battle as EU draws up new scheme. 20 January; and 2017. Who really gives most to help Syria? 10 February.
- 120.
David Cameron was instrumental in getting the EU to boost spending on the World Food Programme, the UN refugee agency and aid to Syria’s neighbours: The Economist. 2015. Charlemagne: Point taken, Mr Orban. 26 September. BBC News. 2017. Who really gives most to help Syria? 10 February.
- 121.
And not a complete ban on EU workers receiving non-contributory in-work benefits for four years but only a graduated phasing-in of their eligibility for such benefits, and the restriction would apply to EU workers arriving over only the next seven years and not the 13 he had asked for: BBC News. 2016. What Cameron wanted and what he got. 20 February.
- 122.
The Economist predicted that the migrant crisis and the EU’s—a slightly harsh judgment, this—“mismanagement” of it would make the case for staying in the EU harder: 2015. Europe’s migrant crisis: Shooting Schengen. 19 September; also 2015. The indispensable European. 7 November.
- 123.
See Shipman, Tim. 2017. All Out War: The Full Story of Brexit, 366 et seq. London: William Collins.
- 124.
Piras, Annalisa. 2016. Read all about it! Brexit press coverage skewed. InFacts. 23 May, and Lythgoe, Luke, and Hugo Dixon. 2016. Press’ hateful 8 stories from Brexit debate. InFacts. 19 May. A survey by the Oxford Reuters Institute of Journalism found that pro-Leave stories carried by the newspapers exceeded pro-Remain articles by 45% to 27%.
- 125.
“Our spies can no longer keep track of terrorists: Brussels must tighten checks on migrants, not lecture member states on taking more of them.”
- 126.
Nigel’s figure was half a million, however: BBC News . 2015. Nigel Farage: EU asylum plan could let in extremists. 29 April.
- 127.
The Daily Telegraph . 2016. Open borders let Isil into Britain, warns US spy chief. 29 April, had a similarly misleading story, which was repeated in Mail Online and the Daily Express: InFacts. 2016. Press’ hateful 8 stories from Brexit debate. 19 May.
- 128.
BBC News. 2016. EU referendum: Brussels attacks spark UK security debate. 24 March, and 2016. Row as ex-intelligence chiefs say EU membership protects UK security. 8 May.
- 129.
See Political Declaration setting out the framework for the future relationship between the European Union and the United Kingdom, Part III: Security Partnership.
- 130.
InFacts. 2016. Press’ hateful 8 stories from Brexit debate. 19 May, Mail Online story headlined “Britain could stop ten times more terror suspects from entering the country if it leaves the EU, justice minister says as he blasts EU rules for allowing terrorists to ‘waltz into Britain.’”
- 131.
InFacts. 2016. Press’ hateful 8 stories from Brexit debate. 19 May, Daily Telegraph , 6 and 17 February 2016, “The daughter-in-law of Abu Hamza cannot be deported from Britain despite a criminal past because of human rights laws, an EU law chief has ruled,” and “More than 700 offences are being committed by EU migrants every week, official figures suggest.” On the Telegraph’s breach of the IPSO code see Press Gazette, 3 May 2016. The European Court of Justice’s ruling on the Abu Hamza daughter-in-law deportation case in September 2016 turned out to be broadly in line with the advice of its Advocate General. It found that Britain could not automatically deport a non-EU national who was the carer of a British child because the child had rights as an EU citizen; however, even then deportation was possible if the British courts considered the convicted individuals to be a danger to society: The Times. 2016. Britain will rule on kicking out Hamza’s daughter-in-law. 14 September. The Mail Online of 14 September typically misrepresented the ECJ ruling as arbitrary meddling in British affairs by its “unelected judges” and said it was a further reason for Mrs May to accelerate Britain’s departure from the EU. Michael Gove cited the Abu Hamza’s daughter-in-law case in an interview with the Daily Telegraph of 7 May 2016, “Gove: We will make Britain safe after Brexit,” as a case of intervention by the EU’s “rogue court” despite there not being a final ruling ECJ ruling at that stage.
- 132.
Sunday Express . 2016. 250 EU migrants serving life sentences in Britain. 17 April.
- 133.
Had they come to Britain deliberately in order to escape the harsher conditions in continental jails—a sort of “jail tourism,” like “benefits tourism” and “health tourism”?
- 134.
And of course there are no British-born criminals in continental jails at their taxpayers’ expense! This story is an evergreen in the Express. It came again in 2018: see Euractiv. 2018. Brexiteers cry foul over EU prisoner figures. 12 April.
- 135.
“We should resist Turkey’s thin-skinned president rather than pander to him: Germany is putting the future security of the EU in the hands of an anti-Western Muslim autocrat.”
- 136.
Mr Cameron’s words in reaction to Jeremy Corbyn visiting the camp in Calais and saying they should be allowed into Britain: BBC News. 2016. Government’s partial answer to migrant criticism. 28 January. See also discussion on BBC 1’s Question Time on 29 January 2016.
- 137.
Daily Telegraph , 2016. The British people will suffer if we stay in the EU. 7 May.
- 138.
The Sun. 2016. Turkey swizzlers. Brits are forking out £675 million to help Turks join EU … even while Cameron insists they won’t. 21 June; 2016. Will Turkey be next? David Cameron ‘lying’ about Turkey joining EU as talks will take place just days after referendum . 22 June.
- 139.
Could The Sun be in the process of converting to Remain? I doubt it. It is more likely to be trying to shift the blame for Brexit on to the campaigners and away from the mouthpieces: The Sun. 2018. “GOVE AND TAKE: Top Brexiteer Michael Gove says Leave campaign was WRONG to spread fears about Turkey joining the EU in order to win the referendum. 16 July. See Baldwin, Tom. Ctrl Alt Delete: How Politics and the Media Crashed our Democracy, 210. London. Hurst, quoting Gove as admitting coyly that “We didn’t always get everything absolutely right,” and Dominic Cummings being a little blunter: “If Boris [Johnson] and Gove had not picked up the baseball bat marked Turkey/NHS/350m with five weeks to go then 650,000 votes would have been lost.”
- 140.
Daily Telegraph . 2016. Visa-free travel deal imminent for Turkey. 3 May, and 2016. Visa-free Turkey ‘terror threat’. 17 May.
- 141.
Daily Express . 2016. Slap a sticker in window. 16 April.
- 142.
Sunday Express . 2016. Turkish to be EU language. 17 April.
- 143.
Daily Telegraph . 2015. Refugees aren’t to blame for the chaos. 28 October.
- 144.
I would be surprised if more than 250 EU officials were working on the migrant crisis. The EU Commission’s Directorate General for Migration and Home Affairs has a total staff of 550.
- 145.
According to the European Commission (The EU and the Migrant Crisis, July 2017), in 2015 it deployed 1550 officers to support member states and their 100,000 or so national officials at external EU border s . Few of these officers would have been permanent officials working in the EU administration.
- 146.
Nelson, Fraser. 2016. Sweden is a good example of how not to handle the Great Migration. Daily Telegraph . 3 February.
- 147.
Daily Mail . 2016. Thirty Tory MPs set to rebel on child refugees. Ministers forced to reconsider letting youngsters in. 30 April.
- 148.
Daily Express. 2016. Anger over UK’s £589m bill for Syrian refugee s —Alarm at Libya migrant surge. 13 April. An editorial in the paper (“Ever more child migrants”) argued against taking unaccompanied child refugees: charity should begin at home.
- 149.
Daily Mail . 2016. Migrants pay £160 to take Alps donkey paths into northern Europe. 16 April. Images of refugees snaking their way through Europe or arriving in boats on Greek shores also increased support for Mme Le Pen before regional election in late 2015 without her having to murmur a word: The Economist. 2015. Charlemagne: The dispensable French. 7 November.
- 150.
See Banks, Arron. 2017. The Bad Boys of Brexit: Tales of mischief, mayhem and guerrilla warfare in the EU referendum campaign , 290–291. London: Biteback.
- 151.
Daily Telegraph . 2016. Turkey doesn’t deserve this huge visa reward. 4 May.
- 152.
Daily Express . 2016. EU seeks control of our coasts. 7 March, and 2016. Now EU wants asylum control: Madness as Brussels plots to tell us who can come and stay in our country. 8 March—both examples from InFacts, 19 May 2016, “Press’ hateful 8 stories from Brexit debate.”
- 153.
Daily Telegraph . 2016. Aegean migrant deal is working, claim EU and Nato. 22 April.
- 154.
Heseltine, Michael. 2017. The Tories need a coronation, not a contest, to anoint their next leader. Daily Telegraph . 20 June, reminding readers that half of Britain’s net migration comes from outside Europe and “we are already free to control it, limit it, or stop it in any way our sovereign interest demands.”
- 155.
Daily Telegraph . 2016. The gap between the official migrant figure and the truth is as wide as the Grand Canyon. We are owed an apology, by Allison Pearson. 13 May, and Daily Express. 2016. Britain’s 1.5 million hidden migrants. 13 May, critiqued in InFacts. 2016. Press’ hateful 8 stories from Brexit debate. 19 May. See also the article by the same Daily Telegraph columnist on 14 June 2017, referred to in Sect. 7.2 above.
- 156.
Daily Mail. 2016. Britain cannot cut migration unless we quit the EU, warns IDS. 16 April. See Office of National Statistics, Migration Statistics Quarterly Report, 25 February 2016.
- 157.
InFacts. 2016. Press’ hateful 8 stories from Brexit debate. 19 May, critiquing the misleading Mail Online article of 3 April 2016. The new headline was “Figures show strain on NHS as doctors take on 1.5 million extra patients in just three years—with Vote Leave campaigners blaming rise on EU migrants.”
- 158.
Daily Mail . 2016. Health tourists’ NHS loophole: EU nationals don’t need special card—or even any ID—to get free treatment, minister admits. 16 April.
- 159.
Huffpost. 2013. The Sun’s front page on immigration with massive red line across Europe is branded ‘xenophobic’. 18 December.
- 160.
BBC News. 2019. UK migration: Increase in net migration from outside the EU. 28 February; Full Facts. 2019. EU immigration to the UK. 18 March; BBC News. 2019. Crossing Divides: Has the UK changed its mind on migration? 4 March; Samuel, Juliet. 2018. Britain must pay the price for living off the fruits of cheap EU workers. Daily Telegraph . 6 February.
- 161.
BBC News. 2019. 4 March, thought the “remarkable change” in attitudes to migration might be because the national debate on immigration during 2017 elections and the Brexit referendum may have focussed people’s minds on the social, practical and economic trade-offs involved in cutting migrant numbers, resulting in a more nuanced response to the issue. That might be so, but there might be a different explanation, namely the ceasefire in xenophobic rhetoric against immigration by politicians and newspapers after the referendum.
- 162.
Gov.UK. 2018. The UK’s future skills-based immigration system. 19 December; Davidson, Ruth. 2017. It is time to give British people a national debate on immigration. Daily Telegraph . 8 August.
- 163.
The Economist. 2018. Essay on Liberalism: Immigration in open societies, 45–46. 15 September.
- 164.
See Cllr Alan Law’s letter to Daily Telegraph of 15 June 2017: “Immigration controls are dubious at best when it actually comes to reducing numbers. Our past performance over that part of immigration we do control—relating to arrivals from outside the EU—has been pretty ineffectual.”
- 165.
Samuel, Juliet. 2018. Britain must pay the price for living off the fruits of cheap EU workers. Daily Telegraph . 6 February.
- 166.
Whitworth, Damian. The Times. 2017. Welcoming migrants was part of our culture. We’ve lost some of that (interview with Ian Hislop). 17 June.
- 167.
The Economist. 2018. Bagehot: A hostile environment . 28 April; 2018. Identity cards: Big bother. 5 May.
- 168.
Clegg, Nick. 2017. Squaring the Brexit circle on freedom of movement. Financial Times. 4 July, and readers’ letters Financial Times, 6 July 2017 (Jonathan Faull) and 15 November 2017 (David Webster). Heseltine, Michael. Daily Telegraph . 2017. The Tories need a coronation, not a contest, to anoint their new leader. 20 June.
- 169.
Soros, George. 2015. By failing to help refugees Europe fails itself. Financial Times . 27 July.
- 170.
The Guardian . 2018. Britons had ‘dark to black’ skin, Cheddar Man DNA reveals. 7 February.
- 171.
Daily Telegraph . 2017. Roman row erupts as Mary Beard defends black cartoon character. 11 June.
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Rawlinson, F. (2019). “Taking Back Control of Our Borders”: Is the EU to Blame for Immigration?. In: How Press Propaganda Paved the Way to Brexit. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27765-9_7
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