May faces backlash after calling non-British queue jumpers
LONDON — Prime Minister Theresa May basically called the 3 million citizens of other European countries living in Britain a bunch of queue jumpers. This has upset some people, because this is quite an insult here.
Understand that in Britain, jumping the queue is simply not done. Not by the British people, or their long-term guests.
East London, West London, posh or poor, public school or private, city or country — if there is a queue, you bloody well take your place.
Keep calm and carry on?
The whole reason that the British — who are actually highly excitable — can keep calm is because there is a queue, and they know that if they stand at the back of it, they will eventually get to the front of it.
Order, people.
You know who cuts in line? In the British mind? Barbarians. Vikings. Foreigners.
It is true that sometimes a clueless tourist will jump the queue and then everyone in line, collectively, begins to get twitchy and invisibly upset, until, collectively, they decide not to actually say anything out loud to the tourist because that would be rude. But they think it.
In a major speech to promote her Brexit deal to business leaders in the country on Monday, May promised, “It will no longer be the case that EU nationals, regardless of the skills or experience they have to offer, can jump the queue ahead of engineers from Sydney or software developers from Delhi.”
Egads. The Europeans didn’t like this at all.
Guy Verhofstadt, the Brexit co-ordinator for the European Parliament, went on Twitter to remind May that the 3 million EU citizens “living, working, contributing to UK communities didn’t ‘jump the queue’ and neither did U.K. nationals in Europe.”
EU citizens are allowed to live and work in Britain legally because they are members of the European Union, as are the British, who also have the right to live and work in other EU countries. This “freedom of movement” is one of the pillars of the EU and its precursor, which Britain joined in 1973.
Brexit will change all that — when Britain leaves the union in 2021, or 2022, or whenever, depending on whom you believe. May has said that part of Brexit’s promise to “take back control” means taking control of Britain’s immigration policies.
“Free movement will end,” May told Parliament last week. “That is one of the key elements, I believe, of the vote in the referendum that we need to ensure we deliver for the British people.”
May has vowed to reduce overall immigration, from 100,000s annually to 10,000s, and to give preference to the high-skilled, high-earning “best and brightest” over the lower-skilled, lowpay workers who currently harvest the crops, clean the hotel rooms, and care for the sick and elderly in Britain.
In the future, EU citizens will not be given any preference, she promised, over someone from India or Australia.
The British press asked May’s official spokesperson what the prime minister meant.
The spokesperson replied, “We have always been clear of the important contribution which EU citizens make to our economy.”