By Martin Vogel
So the Government’s plans for the end of free movement are revealed. Sajid Javid speaks of Britain being open for business. But, in an angry thread on Twitter, Ian Dunt nails the true significance of the measure:
“What he is confirming is the end of arguably the greatest liberal accomplishment of the post-war era. We will no longer be able to go to Europe to start new lives, to create a career, to fall in love, to make new friends… Our society will be so much smaller, narrower, greyer. More boring, less vital. More ignorant, less wealthy. More inward-looking, less powerful.”
And of Labour’s complicity with Government policy, he says:
“So desperately saddening to now watch Diane Abbott, a supporter of liberal immigration policies, support the end of free movement, but dress it up as ‘treating a doctor from Poland the same as one from Pakistan’.”
I find the anti-immigrant sentiment depressing, the more so when dressed up in liberal rhetoric. Britain doesn’t have to be this way. There’s a positive story of our experience of immigration. If politicians won’t speak up for it, we still have The Proclaimers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y67ZTTRzqVk