Ross Clark
ways on the centre-Left. He wants higher pay for publicsector workers such as teachers, nurses and police. He demands rent controls. He was briefly in coalition with the Dutch Conservatives but left in 2010 when they wanted to reduce pension benefits.
I am sure you could find a few people who voted for Brexit and who share Wilders’ extreme views on Islam – you will also find Remainers who share them too. But Islam had absolutely nothing to do with the EU referendum campaign. The defining issue was national sovereignty as expressed by the slogan “take back control”.
True, migration was a big issue but it revolved around large numbers of low-skilled workers and benefit tourists from Eastern Europe, where, with the exception of Bulgaria, the Muslim population is virtually nonexistent.
Not once during the referendum campaign did I hear anyone announcing they wanted to close down all mosques, ban the Koran and turn away all asylum-seekers. In fact I can’t remember coming across anyone in Britain with such extreme views.
What distinguishes Britain among European countries is not racism and xenophobia, which regrettably are present in all countries, but in the
AS for the milder Alternativ fur Deutschland, no British politician would have got away with what leader Frauke Petry did last year: suggesting that police would be in their rights to shoot migrants entering the country illegally. Her party went on to win dozens of seats in state parliaments.
Nor in Britain will you find a mainstream party which wants to do as France has done and ban Muslim women from wearing headscarves and burkinis in public. The right of employers to ban headscarves in the workplace was supported this week by the European Court of Justice – yes, one of those institutions which Remainers hold sacred as the upholders of liberal values.
The petty campaign against headscarves is utterly alien in Britain, where the right to practise your religion peacefully is steeped in our values and few think it the business of the state to lay down rules as to what we can and can’t wear.
However much Remainers try to make out otherwise, Brexit isn’t and never was about cutting ourselves off from the rest of the world, only about freeing ourselves from the EU’s authoritarian diktats. At the end of the Brexit process it will be Britain which stands out as the open society which wants to trade with the rest of the world – and the EU which is left looking insular and riven with xenophobic politics.
Diehard Remainers just can’t see this. They are so disappointed to be leaving the EU that they have resorted to trying to make Britain appear as a foul-minded little island floating away from generous, warm-hearted Europe – and absolutely nothing will shift their opinion.
‘Dutch populist didn’t do as well as expected’