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Barnier’s immigration U-turn won’t come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention

Immigration was a key barometer of all things good and holy only when it was a useful tool to paint Brexit and Brexiteers as racist

European Union's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier gives a statement on the outcome of the Brexit negotiations, in Brussels, Belgium
Michel Barnier has called for all non-European Union immigration into France to be banned for up to five years. Credit:  REUTERS

After years of the Remain campaign branding any British politician who dared criticise the EU’s migration policy a racist, the man lauded for teaching the mean-minded Brits a lesson at the negotiation table has boldly declared that immigration is “not working” for the EU, comparing its external borders to a sieve.  

Did the luminaries at Brussels - the likes of Guy Verhofstadt and Donald Tusk who never missed an opportunity to extoll the benefits of immigration when it could be accompanied by a bit of Brit-bashing - fall over each other to condemn Mr Barnier’s comments as insidious and a threat to the values of the European Union? The answer is of course a resounding no. 

It was in June 2019 when Sajid Javid, the former Chancellor and Home Secretary of the UK was speaking at an event in London and said: “When I first started going to the European Council meetings I didn’t see a single non-white face from any other European country. Now I’m the Home Secretary, it’s still the same, yet to see another non-white minister.” 

It has always fascinated me how the EU and its cheerleaders have managed to establish themselves as the bastion of inclusion and other progressive values, all the while writing off Brits as “Little Englanders” taking an unhealthy pride in “British exceptionalism”. Yet to any non-European, it is the EU that is the cartel of mostly-rich, mostly-white peoples who seem to genuinely consider themselves a cut above the rest of the world. And it is their divine duty to do whatever it takes to keep the bloc’s place in the world order. 

I still wonder if BBC Radio 4 would’ve allowed a Brexiteer to get away with dismissing the world outside the EU as “every Tom Dick and Harry” the way Brussels cheerleader Peter Mandelson did as he expressed his distaste at the possibility of the UK giving up its preferential access to the EU Single Market and having to compete with other countries outside the bloc. 

Guy Verhofstadt took this sentiment even further. At the Liberal Democrat conference in 2019 Mr Verhofstadt set out the threats to the world order from China, India or the US and raised the rallying call, to thunderous applause from the oh-so-internationalist Lib Dem delegates, “The world of tomorrow is a world of empires in which we European and you British can only defend your interest, your way of life by doing it together, in a European framework”. 

The trouble with masks is that they always slip. Immigration was a key barometer of all things good and holy only when it was a useful tool to paint Brexit and Brexiteers as racist.

But the sentiments expressed by Mr Barnier won’t come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention.

This article is an extract from The Telegraph’s Beyond Brexit Bulletin newsletter. Sign up here to get exclusive insight from the UK’s leading commentators James Crisp, Christopher Hope, Dia Chakravarty and more – delivered direct to your inbox every Tuesday and Thursday.

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