Migration

Just as Theresa May's Chequers plan for Brexit was being savaged in Salzburg, EU leaders also found time to engage in their usual response when it comes to the question of migration: a lot of talk, glad-handing, and pats on the back, but very little concrete action. The summit was a two-day affair that encapsulates all of the negative connotations of the EU as an institution: slow, cumbersome, ineffective, and increasingly detached from reality. Hours were devoted to the migration issue, that perennial crisis that has hovered over Brussels over the last five years.

Farming out the development of post-Brexit UK migration policy to a professor from the LSE was a political masterstroke by the former Home Secretary Amber Rudd. How much harder it will be for Remainers to condemn the government’s position on migration as some kind of racist, xenophobic exercise knowing that it has been formed in one of the liberal establishment’s favourite seats of learning. Yet there is nothing in Sir Alan Manning’s report which could not have come from the pen of a ‘populist’ politician trying to satisfy public grievance on migration.

Last week, a 22-year old Swede called Elin Ersson made headlines around the world for her ‘citizen-activism’. Learning that a failed asylum seeker from Afghanistan was to be deported from her country, she bought a seat on the plane that was due to take him part of the way back home (as far as Turkey). Once she was on board the plane Ersson refused to sit down. Filming the whole thing on her mobile phone (natch) Ms Ersson insisted that to send the failed asylum-seeker to his home country would be consigning him to ‘death’ because Afghanistan is ‘hell’. After about 15 minutes of this Ms Ersson got her way. The Afghan migrant was taken off the flight. Some passengers applauded. Ms Ersson cried.

Next week’s EU Council will see little progress on Brexit. As I write in The Sun today, migration—not Brexit—is the biggest issue on the agenda for the EU 27. Migration is roiling European politics again. Angela Merkel’s coalition is threatening to break apart over the issue. While in Italy, the new government is threatening to close its southern border—blocking migrant rescue ships from landing—and open its northern border, encouraging illegal migrants and asylum seekers to head north to Germany and Sweden. So worried is the European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker that he is hosting a mini-summit this Sunday to try and come up with some policies that can ease Merkel’s domestic political troubles.

Germany is this weekend seeing whether or not Angela Merkel will be able to form a government as she deals with the political fallout from her immigration policy. Quite a contrast from Norway, whose Conservative-led coalition recently entered its second term after taking a very different approach to refugees. Last week I met Sylvi Listhaug, who holds a recently-created position: Norway's Minister for Immigration & Integration. She’s with the Progress Party, the junior partner in coalition. You often read about her being 'outspoken' or 'controversial' and I was interested to see what kind of radical views she holds. At the end of the interview, I was left wondering if her take on refugee policy is actually further-sighted and more morally defensible than the Merkel approach.

Ruth Davidson has called into question the government's pledge to bring net migration down to the 'tens of thousands'. The Sun welcomes her comments and says that it is ‘good to hear a senior Tory…talk sense on immigration’. The migration target, according to the paper, is a ‘random, nonsense figure’ and achieving it would probably entail doing damage to the economy. It’s vital, of course, that immigration does come down, given that ‘some communities’ are struggling to cope with the influx of people. This shouldn’t mean doing damage to Britain’s businesses though, and the paper says it is high time for a ‘serious debate’ about the right level.

The Empire for International Development has a tough job justifying its deeply unpopular budget. In recent years, it has made out that development aid will stem the flow of migration. The following line appears in a piece that Priti Patel, the DFID Secretary, writes for the Sunday Telegraph today. We are taking immediate steps to protect our borders and tackle people smuggling. But the only way to resolve this crisis in the long term is to address the root causes. We need to create jobs across Africa and provide its growing population with a route out of poverty where they are. Her overall point - about how Africa needs more capitalism - is brave and correct. But this idea about development quelling immigration is the opposite of the truth.

When a humanitarian tragedy disappears from our newspapers, there are two possibilities: that the crisis is over and life for survivors is gradually returning to normal — or that the human toll has become so routine as to no longer be considered newsworthy. Sadly, the deaths of migrants from North Africa and the Middle East as they attempt to cross the Mediterranean to seek a new life in Europe fall into the latter category. Eighteen months after the photographs of little Alan Kurdi’s body on a Turkish beach generated a huge swell of public emotion, entire families are still dying on a regular basis. In the first ten weeks of this year, some 525 people were lost crossing the Mediterranean. Europe is still no closer to ending this outrage.

‘Take back control’ was the mantra of the Brexit bunch during the referendum - but eight months on, Britain is still waiting to be handed the keys. Next month, says the Daily Telegraph, part of the wait could be over. The paper reports that Theresa May is planning to announce an end to free movement for EU migrants when she triggers Article 50 in March. If this is true, we should celebrate the Prime Minister’s decisiveness, the paper says, hailing the plan as both legal - given that it ‘will only take effect after Brexit’ - and ‘sensible’ - to avoid a rush of migrants coming to Britain before the door slams shut.