For decades, there were activists, academics and politicians on the Continent who looked at Britain, rolled their eyes and tutted. The thought us insular – well, we are an island. We were too attached to our own history and identity, we banged on about the Second World War, defeating Hitler and Nazism; the Great War and defeating the Kaiser and before him, Napoleon, and seeing off the Spaniards in 1588. OK, I admit that’s stretching it a bit. As for the Industrial Revolution, Parliament, the Judiciary, the great universities….. Big deal, they said. Boring, they added.
In1997 came New Labour. Cool Britannia was born. Britain was going to be more diverse (and stronger because of this), and truly multicultural. Andrew Neather, formerly a government advisor, later revealed that the idea was to “rub the Right’s nose in diversity”. Multiculti, as the Germans later dubbed it, would pave the way to a brave, new, “post-national” world.
There was a deep irony in this. The same people who found British identity faintly embarrassing believed Britain was nonetheless exceptional, a pioneer that could lead Europe in building a new social model where nationality and identity were obliterated. We would show the Continent how it was done! Peter Mandelson was a regular visitor to Gerhardt Schroeder’s Berlin to enlighten the Germans on the ‘Third Way’. It was never particularly clear that the Germans went along with this vague social engineering plan, or even if they understood it.
At the heart of the Third Way lay the mass migration experiment. The disastrous effects of mass immigration probably didn’t fully sink in on the Continent until, in 2015, Frau Merkel thought Germany and the EU could manage (wir schaffen das) a million migrants in one fell swoop.
In Britain, looking at every measure that matters to ordinary people – housing, public services, education the work place, social trust – the consequences have been devastating. In just a few short decades, Britain went from pioneer to cautionary tale.
And of course, the world has noticed. This week, Alain Berset, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, visited Downing Street and acknowledged that concerns about mass migration, voiced repeatedly by the British public, must be taken seriously. He conceded that European conversations on immigration had remained in a “comfortable” space for too long. A political declaration recognising nations’ “undeniable sovereign right” to manage their borders is reportedly 95% agreed and expected to be finalised at a Council of Europe summit in Chișinău next month.
On the same day as Berset’s visit, new research from the Centre for Research and Analysis on Migration revealed that the EU’s foreign-born population has reached a record 64.2 million, up from around 40 million in 2010, a rise of over 60% in just fifteen years. Germany alone now hosts nearly 18 million foreign-born residents. These are staggering figures.
Public opinion is shifting accordingly. New polling by IFOP for the Printemps Républicain found that 60% of French adults believe France is undergoing a “profound demographic transformation” driven by the growing presence of non-European populations. Of those who hold that view, two-thirds regard the change as entirely negative.
Public and political pressure is, finally, feeding through into action. Last month, the European Parliament voted 389 to 206 to approve legislation enabling the creation of “return hubs” outside EU territory: offshore processing centres to which rejected asylum seekers can be removed. Sound familiar? This is along the lines of Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda scheme, which Sir Keir Starmer dumped on the day he took office, and which our own political establishment fought tooth and nail to stop and then to destroy. Europe is now adopting the very approach it once condemned us for pursuing.
The argument for mass, uncontrolled migration has been lost by those who insisted that immigration was an unalloyed good, that concerns were simply prejudice, and that any questioning of whether demographic change was desirable or even workable were beyond the pale. Even the most ideologically committed advocates of open borders can no longer ignore the reality in front of them.
At Migration Watch UK, we take no pleasure in saying we warned the government over many years this would happen. Nevertheless, the numbers, and with them tensions, continue to grow, along with the pressures in areas I’ve already mentioned. We must get a grip, quickly, or suffer the consequences.
