If I was asked to pick one thing about the EU that I
like it would be the fact that it allows me to live and work anywhere in the EU
without too much difficulty. But like all rights it has to be reciprocal.
British people cannot reasonably expect to be able to live and work in Spain
unless we allow Spaniards to live and work in Britain. But why would we want to limit the right
of Spaniards to come here? Why for that matter would we want to limit the right
of any European to come to Britain?
At the heart of the debate about the EU is the topic
of immigration. But it is being made in a way that completely misses the point.
This is in part because immigration is a difficult, almost a taboo topic. Like
so many issues in modern Britain we’re all scared to say what we think clearly
in case we commit the unforgivable sin and get cast into outer darkness.
I have lived and worked abroad, both inside and
outside of the European Union. My husband is from Russia. So that makes me
someone who has benefited from immigration. I don’t think it is reasonable to
be against any individual in the world coming to live in Britain. But it is
perfectly reasonable to oppose all individuals in the world coming to live in
Britain. There are more than seven billion people in the world. They cannot all
have the right to live and work here. For this reason we have to limit the
right of those who may want to come here.
Some people favour bringing down all borders and
allowing everyone in the world to live and work where they please. This would have the consequence however of
effectively abolishing countries. What
after all is a country, but the people who live in it? We may think that a country
is a matter of land, but this is not so. Take a look at the boundaries of
Germany. It’s rather smaller than it was prior to the First World War. Germany used to stretch all the way to modern
day Lithuania. The whole Polish cost was German. It’s not German now, because
the Germans were forced out. Poles and Russians took their place.
So let’s be clear. If you take a small country like
Denmark and replace the population with people from elsewhere, you won’t have
Denmark anymore. You’ll still have the land, but you won’t have the language or
the culture or even the Danes.
Throughout the centuries Britain has defended itself
against various foes. But even if we had lost, our island would have remained
intact. We weren’t therefore defending our land so much as our people. If
Germany had conquered Britain and supplanted our population with theirs, we
wouldn’t have had Britain anymore, we’d have had Germany. Some people may think
this is farfetched, but it is exactly this that Germany intended to do in
Eastern Europe. If they had won the Second World War, they would have extended
Germany to the Urals. There would have been no more Poland, and no more Russia,
because in these places there would have been no Poles and no Russians apart
perhaps from slaves.
But if we have been willing throughout the centuries
to defend ourselves against those who would supplant us, then clearly we have
the right to do so now. Our army would
fight against an enemy trying to take over our country. We would do everything
in our power to avoid this. Yet we stand idly by while this happens gradually.
The UK’s population may reach eighty million within
twenty five years. My guess is that if this happens the vast majority will live
in the large cities in England. But there is free movement within the UK and anyone
who lives here can choose to live anywhere. What if people began to decide that
England was so full that it was preferable to move to somewhere with a bit more
space, such as Scotland. If all fifteen million decided to come to Scotland our population
would quadruple. A small minority of
Scots would then have surnames beginning with ‘Mac’. Few indeed would speak
Scots and fewer still would speak Gaelic. It would be hard to justify having
television programmes in Gaelic when it was spoken by less than fifty thousand
out of a population of twenty million. The road signs would, no doubt, no
longer be in Gaelic. They might no longer even be in English. Places names are
apt to change when populations change massively. You won’t find Königsberg or
Breslau on any maps now.
How many Scots would still wear kilts at weddings or
recite Burns in January if our population benefited so much from immigration
over the next quarter of a century? What would it be like to live in Scotland
then? It would be rather full I imagine. But we’d be able to comfort ourselves
that migration had brought with it diversity even if we’d lost some scenery. But
what would have happened to all those things that we associate with Scotland
today? Would they have been maintained or would they rather have been
destroyed?
It’s all very well thinking immigration is wonderful
when it happens to someone else, but my guess is that the average Scottish
nationalist would be horrified if the fifteen million people who may come to
the UK in the next twenty five years ended up in Scotland. These new Scots for
one thing might be uninterested in Scottish independence. They might not even think
of themselves as Scots at all. But then Scottish Nationalist support for the EU
and the virtually unlimited immigration that it brings looks rather
hypocritical. It’s quite easy to be in favour of open borders when we know that
ours will rarely be crossed. The benefits of immigration are great so long as
only England benefits.
Freedom of movement in Europe is a good thing. Most
Europeans who come to live and work in Britain will adapt and learn to speak
English. If they decide to stay their children will be indistinguishable from
anyone else in Britain. But there has to be a limit and migration within Europe
has to be managed. If this is not the case it will have lasting consequences
not only for us, but for the countries from which the migrants have come.
Already parts of Eastern Europe are suffering from the fact that there are only
old people left there. If enough people leave Latvia, it’s not clear that there
will be a Latvia any more.
If Britain left the EU, we would be better able to
decide who from the EU could come here. We have gained massively from freedom
of movement within the EU. This could continue even after Brexit. It’s worth
remembering that people, from non EU countries, such as Norway, Switzerland and
Iceland can still live and work anywhere in the EU. But just as the rights of
Bulgarians and Romanians were limited when they first joined the EU, it would
be reasonable for some sort of limit to be put on the number who can come to
Britain. This would benefit integration here and ease the brain drain in
Eastern Europe. It would be foolish to even try to prevent immigration from Europe, but if it
isn’t managed it will damage both Britain and the EU.
The main benefit of leaving the EU however is not
that it would limit migration from Europe. It may give us some more control and
some more choice, but I would expect something close to free movement to
continue in any event. It is a condition for access to the EU single market
after all. Only on the day after voting to leave would negotiations even begin.
At that point everyone both in the UK and the EU who is predicting disaster
would be doing their best to avoid disaster. The end point of negotiations
would most likely be something close to the position of Norway. The EU would be free to
pursue its path to ever closer union while the UK would have the free trade association
which is all that the vast majority of us have ever wanted. Unless you actually want political union with
the other EU countries, you should clearly vote to leave. We would soon find
out that we’d barely notice leaving the EU. There might be some sort of cap on
the number of people able to come here from the EU. It might be made rather
harder for Poles to claim benefits in the UK that British people can't get in
Poland. But none of this would change things a great deal. This is because the
British economy benefits from EU migrants and the reason immigration is a
political issue in the UK is anyway not because of people coming here from the
EU. But given that leaving the EU will not greatly change migration from
Europe, what point does it have? The reason is quite simple. Leaving the EU
would massively help our ability to control migration from outside the EU.
It is already in theory very hard indeed for someone
from outside the EU to come to Britain legally. My husband has had to jump
through all sorts of difficult hoops in order to get a passport. But
practically speaking, anyone from anywhere who arrives in Britain whether
legally or illegally cannot be deported. We our constrained by the rules of the European Union into letting an indefinite number of people who arrive on our
shores to remain.
People who oppose leaving the EU talk about all
sorts of scary things that would happen if we leave. But remaining in the EU
guarantees that the population of our country continues to grow to such an
extent that we would need another fifteen Birminghams. There is nothing we can
do to stop this if we remain in the EU. This scares me far more than anything
else that might happen. Britain will change irreversibly in the coming decades
if we choose to stay in the EU and we will be powerless to do anything about
it. Only by leaving the EU and thereby making UK law supreme rather than subordinate to EU law, will we regain the power to decide who can live here. Attempts to limit immigration without these powers are an exercise in futility.
We must make everyone in Britain welcome no matter
where they have come from. But it is in all of our interests that long term the
character of our country continues. This is as much the case if my parents
arrived here recently or have been here as long as it is possible to trace. Limited
immigration benefits Britain and we should not close our doors to anyone. But
unlimited immigration is an existential threat to our country. Leaving the EU is the only way we can regain the means to defend ourselves and our border.