Matteo Salvini’s tough immigration stance is paying off

Well, stone me. A new “populist” government in Italy actually does something to stop the NGO taxi service which ferries migrants masquerading as refugees from the Libyan coast to Sicily 350 miles away. It does what no Italian government has dared do before and refuses to allow an NGO ship with hundreds of migrants on board, nearly all men from sub-Saharan Africa, or men pretending to be boys, to dock in Italy. And it says it will block all NGO migrant ships in the future.

Europe’s liberal imperialists are duly appalled at what the deplorable populists now in charge of the EU’s fourth largest economy have done. Whether left-wing multiculturalists or right-wing global capitalists, they see migrants as the key weapon to end both Europe’s demographic crisis and its nation states. But guess what? Most Italian people do not agree with them at all. They see this mass illegal immigration as an existential threat to their country, culture and jobs. And so they applaud this new Italian government – a coalition of the alt left Five Star Movement and the hard right Lega – and its popularity soars.

The Lega, whose leader Matteo Salvini, the new interior minister and deputy prime minister, is the driving force behind Italy’s refusal to allow the NGO rescue ship, Aquarius, to land its 629 migrants in Sicily, is reaping the benefits of this stance. All NGO vessels should take their migrants instead, Salvini insists, to the first safe port as required by maritime law; Malta, for instance, is far nearer to Libya, but last year took in only 23 migrants compared to Italy’s 120,000.