REMAIN campaigners like to pose as the champions of truth. Unable to comprehend their defeat in the EU referendum they constantly proclaim that the case for Brexit was built on the deception of the public.
Mr Duncan Smith rightly argues that post Brexit there should be tough restrictions on EU immigration
A particular target for their fury is the Leavers’ claim that Britain sends £350million a week to Brussels, money that the Government will be able to spend at home once we take back control of our national finances after independence.
Brimming with righteous indignation the Remoaners dismiss this as “a lie”. But it is nothing of the sort. The reality is our gross annual contribution to the EU coffers is about £18billion. It is true that we receive a substantial rebate but such a sum is always vulnerable to the whims of Brussels bureaucrats.
Nor does our payment include all the other costs of EU membership such as compliance with officialdom. Indeed the extent of our financial subjugation to Brussels has been painfully illustrated by Brexit negotiations, with the EU making ever more punitive demands.
There is no basis for the Remoaners’ hysteria about supposed dishonesty from the Brexit camp. On the contrary their whole stance reeks of hypocrisy. They are the ones who constantly indulge in misleading propaganda. They constantly extol the virtues of open borders, telling us that free movement is the real engine of British prosperity.
Much of their noisy advocacy for the EU has descended into a form of national self-loathing, with European migrants portrayed as far more skilled, diligent and successful than lazy, feckless Britons.
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That mentality was perfectly captured in the words of arch-Remainer Lord Kerr, who declared: “We native Brits are so bloody stupid that we need an injection of intelligent people from outside.”
According to the pro-Brussels, anti-British narrative, the vast EU influx is a source of unalloyed economic growth and fiscal generosity. But that theory, which has become the orthodoxy of our times, has just been blown apart by a research paper from former Cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith. Based on calculations by independent think tank Migration Watch, which was founded by distinguished former diplomat Lord Green, this new study estimates that EU migrants actually claimed £4billion a year in benefits in 2013/14.
Part of the sum was made up of £1.1billion in payouts for jobless Europeans. Another £714 million went on child benefit. Duncan Smith's paper shows that migrants from 10 European countries, most of them in the former Soviet bloc, receive more than 20 per cent of their income tax and national insurance contributions back in tax credits and child benefit, compared with the UK average of 16 per cent.
Mr Duncan Smith rightly argues that post Brexit there should be tough restrictions on EU immigration including bars on entry for those without jobs or the ability to support themselves. It is ridiculous that under Brussels rule we have to support foreigners who may have made no contribution to our society but want to exploit our welfare state. That approach demeans the very concept of citizenship.
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But it is precisely what has been happening, despite the Remoaners’ attempts to hide the truth. One study by the Office for National Statistics last year revealed that there are 390,000 EU nationals living here who are economically inactive. In the same vein, when David Cameron tried unsuccessfully in 2016 to negotiate the reform of free movement, Downing Street admitted that “40 per cent of EU migrants who have arrived in the last four years are supported by the benefits system”.
Even those EU newcomers in work are often burdens on the state because their low pay has to be subsidised by tax credits. In a notorious but characteristic outburst Left-wing commentator Yasmin Alibhai-Brown once wrote that “tax-paying migrants past and present keep indolent British scroungers on their couches drinking beer and watching TV”. But that is an offensive delusion. In fact British people have paid twice over for the massive import of cheap labour. First, at the bottom end of the market, they have seen their own living standards ferociously squeezed by foreign competition.
Second, they have seen their taxes used to underwrite dismal wages. This is the economics of the madhouse: the publicly funded welfare state enables employers to hire foreigners on low pay to the exclusion of British workers.
It is amazing that progressives, because they are so wedded to the ideology of mass immigration, should still support this racket, which has brought Britain squalor, exploitation and poverty. In one telling case 35 Eastern European workers were found living in a five-bedroom house in London. Some migrants even live in makeshift camps on open ground in the capital. Pressure group Migrants Rights Network bleated that such outcomes are “regrettable” but are now “a feature of London life”. Well, they shouldn’t be, but that is what free movement has imposed on us.
Other consequences can be seen all around us: in pressures on the NHS and schools, in the number of foreign nationals in British jails, and in rising homelessness, with migrants comprising 60 per cent of rough sleepers in the capital.
That all adds up to the real price of EU membership, far beyond anything the Brexiteers claimed on the side of their campaign bus.
