Remainers’ EU delusions are collapsing

Ultra-Remainers like nothing better than to denounce Britain as a pariah among Western nations. They condemn the UK as xenophobic and backward. The EU is correspondingly depicted as a pioneer of human rights, benign liberalism and progress. Evidence of this quasi-religious faith in the so-called European ideal has been especially strong in the debate about illegal migration, where the Government’s Rwanda policy has attracted controversy. Only Brexit Britain, they seem to think, would do something so awful as to deport illegal migrants.

How, then, will they greet the news that Rishi Sunak has joined forces with the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, to campaign for an EU-wide crackdown on illegal migration, and that other European countries may wish to enter Rwanda-style deals? While the Brussels elites do their best to pretend nothing has changed, European politics has steadily shifted to the Right, in part because of the migrant crisis. Voters quite correctly expect the authorities to be able to control who comes into their countries. Regrettably, the failure to do this has fuelled the emergence of some extremist parties on the Continent, but it has also boosted more mainstream conservative forces.

Italy, in particular, has had to contend with tens of thousands of people arriving on its shores from North Africa. It has not yet found a policy that is effective, and Ms Meloni is under similar pressure to Mr Sunak to stop the flow of people. The Italian prime minister has previously defended the Rwanda deal, arguing that some of the criticism of the scheme was misplaced. Certainly, it is hard to imagine a sustainable solution to illegal immigration that does not involve the deportation of some illegal arrivals.

The Left has no answer to the migration crisis. It remains committed to old-fashioned doctrines that are being blown apart by the sheer number of people seeking to make often dangerous journeys to Britain or other parts of Europe. It is also likely that the scale of the crisis will increase. Britain is a generous country that has offered sanctuary to the people of Hong Kong, has happily given refuge to tens of thousands of Ukrainians, and has taken in many others fleeing conflicts or authoritarian regimes. But that generosity cannot be unlimited, and nor can the process of accepting people be as disorderly as it is today.

Mr Sunak has tied his political fate to stopping the Channel crossings, and much hinges on the Supreme Court, which later this year is expected to rule on the lawfulness of the Rwanda scheme. But this is about more than short-term politics, or about how one country seeks to protect its borders. It is about how the West will confront one of the defining challenges of this century. Britain is not an outlier in proposing tough action. Nor will our politics necessarily be immune to some of the trends in European politics if illegal immigration isn’t drastically curtailed. Voters are not willing to accept what amount to open borders.