Migration

It is somehow fitting that during an Olympic Games a department of Her Majesty’s government is busy smashing records. In the very week that a man ran the 400 metre hurdles at the Tokyo Olympics in a previously unthinkable time of sub-46 seconds, the Home Office presided over the arrival of 482 irregular migrants on the south coast of England in a single day. That easily broke a previous record of 430, set on 19 July or ‘freedom day’. Startled observers of the cross-Channel chaos are now pondering whether the 500 barrier could even be exceeded one day this summer. That the Norwegian hurdler Karsten Warholm’s record represented astounding success, while

Matteo Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister and interior minister, is one of the most controversial politicians in Europe. The 45-year old chief of the League party exudes a down-to-earth demeanour with his common-man social media posts, in which he shares pictures of himself eating Barilla pasta and Nutella. To his many opponents, Salvini is a thick-headed, semi-fascist ideologue who wants to turn back the clock and return Europe to a dangerous form of nationalism. But to his supporters, in and out of Italy, he is a straight-talking, no-nonsense defender of his country’s sovereignty against the northern elites in Berlin and Brussels. However Salvini is seen, one thing is beyond dispute: migration levels

Just as Theresa May’s Chequers plan for Brexit was being savaged in Salzburg, EU leaders also found time to engage in their usual response when it comes to the question of migration: a lot of talk, glad-handing, and pats on the back, but very little concrete action. The summit was a two-day affair that encapsulates all of the negative connotations of the EU as an institution: slow, cumbersome, ineffective, and increasingly detached from reality. Hours were devoted to the migration issue, that perennial crisis that has hovered over Brussels over the last five years. Based on the public statements before, during, and after the informal summit, you would be excused for

Farming out the development of post-Brexit UK migration policy to a professor from the LSE was a political masterstroke by the former Home Secretary Amber Rudd. How much harder it will be for Remainers to condemn the government’s position on migration as some kind of racist, xenophobic exercise knowing that it has been formed in one of the liberal establishment’s favourite seats of learning. Yet there is nothing in Sir Alan Manning’s report which could not have come from the pen of a ‘populist’ politician trying to satisfy public grievance on migration. While it is no doubt true that some people voted Brexit in the hope of stopping all migration,

Last week, a 22-year old Swede called Elin Ersson made headlines around the world for her ‘citizen-activism’. Learning that a failed asylum seeker from Afghanistan was to be deported from her country, she bought a seat on the plane that was due to take him part of the way back home (as far as Turkey). Once she was on board the plane Ersson refused to sit down. Filming the whole thing on her mobile phone (natch) Ms Ersson insisted that to send the failed asylum-seeker to his home country would be consigning him to ‘death’ because Afghanistan is ‘hell’. After about 15 minutes of this Ms Ersson got her way.

Next week’s EU Council will see little progress on Brexit. As I write in The Sun today, migration—not Brexit—is the biggest issue on the agenda for the EU 27. Migration is roiling European politics again. Angela Merkel’s coalition is threatening to break apart over the issue. While in Italy, the new government is threatening to close its southern border—blocking migrant rescue ships from landing—and open its northern border, encouraging illegal migrants and asylum seekers to head north to Germany and Sweden. So worried is the European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker that he is hosting a mini-summit this Sunday to try and come up with some policies that can ease Merkel’s

Germany is this weekend seeing whether or not Angela Merkel will be able to form a government as she deals with the political fallout from her immigration policy. Quite a contrast from Norway, whose Conservative-led coalition recently entered its second term after taking a very different approach to refugees. Last week I met Sylvi Listhaug, who holds a recently-created position: Norway’s Minister for Immigration & Integration. She’s with the Progress Party, the junior partner in coalition. You often read about her being ‘outspoken’ or ‘controversial’ and I was interested to see what kind of radical views she holds. At the end of the interview, I was left wondering if her