Brexiteers won’t now admit it, but removing EU citizens was a key part of Vote Leave’s campaign

Who could have predicted that the fate of millions of people from EU member states presently residing in the United Kingdom remains uncertain? There may be something deplorable about treating their future as though it was a card to be played in the negotiations to determine the terms and conditions of Britain’s departure from the EU but, deplorable or not, there is little that is surprising about it. This is so even though treating these people in this way leaves many people, including many Leave voters, feeling distinctly queasy. If nothing else it offends an inchoate sense of fair-play. But negotiations change previously accepted realities. There is little avoiding the fact that much of the Leave campaign was based, implicitly, on something more than just taking control of Britain’s borders in the future. After all, if immigration from the EU had been excessive in the past did it not follow that there were, right now, too many foreigners living in Britain? It wasn’t just imaginary future immigrants who were putting intolerable pressure on hard-pressed public services, it was real and actual immigrants doing so now.