Should there be sovereign nation states with borders
or should we reject that model of the world as archaic and cruel and work
towards a world without borders where everyone is welcome and we share the
resources of the world equally? Imagine if we could all live where we pleased,
if there were no passports but we were all just citizens of the world and we
each paid taxes to a world government that distributed the revenue so that no
one was poor and the standard of living was the same everywhere. Would that not
be Heaven on Earth?
The EU has become the dividing line in UK politics not
because of economics, but because it represents to supporters particularly on
the Left a move away from the nation state towards free movement and the merging
of peoples. If it were genuinely possible to create a federal EU state then it
would be a decisive step towards removing all borders. If people speaking
different languages in the EU can share wealth, mix freely and share
sovereignty then they could equally well do so with people from Africa, Asia
and South America.
The main barrier to the EU succeeding is that people
from the member states still think of themselves as primarily German or French
or Polish. They still think of their country as the source of their identity along
with their language and ancestry. But free movement, intermarriage and perhaps
in time a common language spoken by all will lead to primary loyalty going to
the EU and a common EU identity covering all member states. At this point there
will be no objection to Germans sharing resources with Greeks, because Germans
and Greeks will have a common identity. They will just be Europeans. Germans
will be as willing to share with the French as they were to share with East
Germans.
There is little doubt that this is the EU’s long-term
aim. It is also the aim of those who favour borderless travel and unlimited migration.
The main reason why British voters rejected the EU in favour of Brexit had
nothing whatsoever to do with weighing up the pros and cons of membership, nor
did it have much to do with extra money for the NHS. Brexiteers rejected the EU
because they wanted British sovereignty (taking back control) and because they
wanted to be able to limit migration.
I thought at the time that the best feature of the EU
was that people from EU member states could freely live and work in the UK. Britain
has an aging population. The UK birth-rate is below the replacement rate. So,
if you want people to pay taxes to maintain public spending you have to either
increase the birth rate or you have to import them from abroad. If you don’t
get them from Europe you have to get them from outside Europe. Having left the
EU, this is what we are now doing.
At present nearly 17% of the population of England and
Wales was born abroad. The figure is 7% in Scotland and around 6.5% in Northern
Ireland. There is an enormous fuss about people arriving in rubber dinghies.
But the record numbers this year of 40,000 are trivial compared to the 573,000
who migrated in 2021. Net migration last year was 239,000 and has been at a similar
level for years.
There is no attempt by government to limit migration.
Quite the reverse, because it thinks the British welfare state would collapse without migration.
There would not be enough tax payers to pay our pensions, our schools and our
beloved NHS. The people we vote for to take back control of our borders,
whether they are Labour or Conservatives, merely pretend to do so. I think part
of the pretence is to talk occasionally about being flooded or invaded.
It would be relatively easy to limit migration if we
wanted to. Cease giving visas to people from poor countries unless they have
for instance £100,000 in their bank. But our universities depend on the fees
from foreign students. Our tourism depends on allowing people to visit who we
know might choose to stay. The problem is not so much asylum, though there
ought to be a legal way to tell the genuine asylum seeker from the economic
migrant. But we could leave the European Court of Human Rights, ditch every
treaty that prevents us stopping or deporting those we think are not genuine asylum
seekers and it would not bring down the numbers of migrants one little bit.
If we successfully stopped the dinghies our politicians
would merely increase the number of legal visas to keep net migration at around
250,000 per year.
It is national identity that stops the EU from
achieving its goal. It was national identity that meant the Soviet Union disbanded
even though it had a common language, which the EU lacks. It is national
identity that threatens the very existence of the UK even though it is precisely
the UK model that the EU has to emulate if it is to become a state.
If after more than 300 years and in the case of
England and Wales nearly 800 years of being united the national identities of
the parts of the UK are such that they still want separation, then what chance
is there to merge the parts of the EU into a single nation state? If Welsh,
Scots and English who universally speak each other’s language cannot bear to
live in the same state how can Slovenes and Spaniards? Calling it a federation
doesn’t change the essence of sharing a single state. Well one way might be
when nearly everyone in Scotland and England, Wales, Spain and Slovakia has a
mother from somewhere far away and a father from somewhere still further. That
will bring down borders, because everyone will be from elsewhere.
But this is our problem. 100 years ago, when everyone
living in the UK could trace his ancestry back to the Norman Conquest and when
the cultural and linguistic differences between the part of the UK were far greater
than they are today, there were no serious independence movements and Scottish
and Welsh nationalism barely existed. But now as all parts of the UK are more multiracial
and multicultural nationalism is on the march. But it is on a march to nowhere.
Both the UK and the EU are I think deliberately making
it easier for migrants while pretending that they are trying to limit
migration. They are removing borders and saying that anyone anywhere in the
world can be British, or French just so long as they reach our territory either
legally by means of a visa or illegally by means of dinghy.
But if you continue down this route it makes both a
mockery of Brexit and also makes it pointless. We would be better off having
the advantages of the Single Market and free movement if we are going to allow
unlimited migration anyway. We would be better accepting a world without
borders and the gradual withering away of the nation state if that in fact is
what a modern economy and welfare state requires.
But if that is the case and I begin to think that it
is, then we are being conned. Neither Scottish nationalism, creating a border
between England and Scotland, nor Brexit make any sense at all if the direction
of travel is towards removing borders and citizenship. Both leaving the EU and
Scotland leaving the UK become debates about nothing, merely to distract a
population that still thinks it has a choice.
