Migrant chaos means the PM must get tough

ON May 8, as he stood triumphant in Downing St, David Cameron clearly hoped his referendum negotiations would lead the agenda at future Brussels summits.

In the early hours of yesterday came the rude awakening, as he was given just ten minutes to make his case, long after the dessert plates had been cleared away (and with Francois Hollande apparently answering the call of nature).

Instead, proceedings had been dominated by the interminable wrangling over the next sticking-plaster bailout for Greece and the Mediterranean boat crisis.

This being the EU, it produced solutions for neither.

Greece has yet another ‘final’ deadline early next week while plans for each member state to take a binding quota of the migrants pouring into Europe collapsed in acrimony.

For his part, Mr Cameron was able to point to the fact Britain has an opt-out on EU immigration matters.

But it would be naïve in the extreme for him to think this insulates us from what promises to be a summer of chaos, as the migrants make their way across mainland Europe to northern France, joining the 3,000 already massed at Calais.

These people – overwhelmingly economic migrants from Africa – require no invitation or quota system to enter Britain: they simply hide in the back of a lorry. The number of stowaways who are getting through our porous borders is, according to police, up by almost 200 per cent in recent months.

And, to make matters worse, the Appeal Court yesterday struck down the Home Office’s fast-track system for dealing with clearly unfounded asylum claims.

The message is that Britain is still a good place for illegal migrants to try their luck.

Which brings us back to Mr Cameron’s European negotiations in preparation for the referendum.

To date, his demands are decidedly modest – particularly on immigration, where he is merely seeking to restrict access to tax credits for EU workers. On freedom of movement across the continent, there is nothing – presumably because he believed other member states would not countenance any change.

But – in the wake of the Mediterranean crisis, and the quota row in Brussels – free movement is no longer considered an undisputed positive by many EU states.

Doesn’t this give the Prime Minister just the opportunity he needs to build allies and demand that Britain, and other member states, should get back genuine control of their borders?

During the election campaign, he was desperate to avoid talking about immigration, doing so only after this paper implored him to do so.

But, with good reason, it remains the public’s greatest concern.

He can either get tough (and ambitious) with Brussels – or risk losing control of a referendum debate in which immigration is certain to be the number one issue.