Liberals are oblivious to their hypocrisy over the Channel migrant crisis.
Whenever anyone says migrants should stay in France, British centrists are furious. But logically they should agree
The row over small boats has been raging for a very long time. Yet there’s still one aspect of it that I don’t understand.
Since 2016, British liberals have given the consistent impression that the EU is an earthly paradise: prosperous, stable, forward-looking and inclusive. By contrast, they fume, Brexit Britain is a hateful, backward, crumbling, economically doomed dump.
Their position is clear. Yet, whenever anyone suggests that migrants should stay in France – the largest country in the EU – rather than cross the Channel to Britain, liberals are appalled. They react as if it’s unspeakably cruel and inhumane.
Logically, however, they should take the opposite view. They should think it’s cruel and inhumane to make the migrants stay in nasty old Britain, rather than the heavenly EU. If anything, British metropolitan liberals should be gathering in their tens of thousands to form a human barrier all the way along the Kent coast, in order to prevent migrants from entering – for their own good.
“Turn back immediately!” they should bellow through their loudhailers at every approaching dinghy. “Do not, repeat not, seek sanctuary in Britain! This country is a failing, bigoted, corrupt, austerity-ruined, sewage-sodden, virulently Islamophobic hellhole populated by ghastly Tory-voting gammon who worship statues of slave traders and despise anyone whose skin is any colour but crimson! So for pity’s sake, turn your boats around, and enjoy a glorious new life in elegant, cultured, joyously cosmopolitan France! We’d leap aboard and join you ourselves, if only the stupid Brexiteers hadn’t ended our freedom of movement!”
