Migrants flock for jobs in UK before Brexit

The sight of Britain leaving has spurred the French Right to take the need for European reform seriously

THE number of Eastern Europeans working in the UK has surged since the referendum amid concerns that migrants will be barred from arriving after Brexit.

The Office for National Statistics ( ONS) said that the number of migrants from Eastern Europe employed in Britain rose by 49,000 between July and September to 1,077,000.

The figures show that the overall number of people born overseas working in the UK increased by 430,000 to 5.55 million in the past year. The number of UKborn people working in Britain increased by 36,000 in the same period, meaning that people born outside the UK accounted for more than nine in 10 of new workers.

Over the same period, the number of UK nationals in work – which includes many people born outside the UK – rose by 213,000 to 28.3 million, pushing the unemployment rate to a 10-year low despite “project fear” warnings that a vote to leave the EU would cost jobs.

The number of working migrants born in Western Europe fell for the first time in two years, from 992,000 to 962,000.

The overall rise in foreign workers has led to claims of an “influx” of migrants seeking a job in Britain before rules around living and working in the UK change.

Lord Green of Deddington, the chairman of Migration Watch UK said: “This continuing influx helps explain why the British people voted for Brexit and is a sharp reminder that the forthcoming negotiations must get these numbers down.” Tim Loughton MP, a Conservative member of the home affairs select committee, said: “I’m sure part of this rise is down to Brexit and people getting under the wire before it is too late.”

He added: “The bottom line is this does highlight the fact that there is a problem with the inevitable delay of triggering Brexit which produces a window of opportunity for people thinking about coming to the UK and thinking, ‘I should get on with it now’; so we’re likely to see these disproportionate spikes in people moving here while that remains open.”

A poll has found that three quarters of people believe EU migrants should have to apply to live and work in the UK in the same way as those from outside the EU, while 70 per cent think Britain should limit the number of EU nationals allowed into the country.

The survey, conducted by Prof John Curtice, senior research fellow at NatCen, a social research institute, also found that 55 per cent of Remain voters believe EU migration should be limited.

The ONS figures show that there were 2.3 million EU nationals working in the UK in the latest quarter, up by 232,000 on a year ago, but lower than the increase on the previous year.

In the quarter to September, 1.6 million people were unemployed, the lowest since 2006. The employment rate of 74.5 per cent is the highest since records began in 1971 but researchers suggested the job market may be “cooling” overall.

You know the story. A brazen anti-immigration iconoclast, fair hair flying, takes on an unpopular, failed former presidential candidate facing the possibility of criminal charges before the election. But this isn’t America in 2016, it’s France in 2017.

Marine Le Pen, the steel-blonde leader of the French National Front, was filling our screens on Sunday as she batted off Andrew Marr’s absurdly softball questions. But this weekend, little noticed in Britain, France’s centre-Right Republican party will start to select the candidate most likely to keep Ms Le Pen out of office next year.

Sunday will mark the first time France’s Republicans (the latest name for de Gaulle’s heirs) have held an open primary, involving seven candidates – quickly labelled “the seven dwarves” online – and three TV debates. The two leading contenders, Nicolas “Dopey” Sarkozy and Alain “Doc” Juppé, are both political hasbeens trying to make comebacks. But despite their establishment careers, they can feel the wind changing. They’re both, in different ways, proposing major changes to the way Europe is governed. And if they can’t succeed where Britain failed, the EU’s prospects look truly bleak.

Mr Sarkozy has responded to the rise of the National Front by lurching to the Right. Like Hillary Clinton, he has spent much of his campaign waiting to hear whether he’ll be prosecuted, in his case for fraudulently flouting spending limits in his failed 2012 bid for presidential re-election. Also like Mrs Clinton, he has had a late-career conversion to causes raised by populists.

Since losing to François Hollande, he has declared there are too many foreigners in France, promised to ban the Muslim veil from universities, supported a National Front pledge to give police more freedom to shoot fleeing suspects, declared that humans didn’t cause climate change, and voiced support for protectionist trade tariffs. There’s little evidence that hardline rhetoric works: if voters want a National Front candidate, they tend to vote for one, as shown in Nice last year, when Ms Le Pen’s party won the mayoral election.

By contrast, Mr Juppé is hoping to mop up moderate voters. The 71-year-old former prime minister, who has a criminal conviction for corruption, has rebranded himself as “A J”, the centrist, liberal, truth-telling grandpa of the campaign. He is proposing lower business taxes, lower government spending, a higher retirement age, an end to the 35-hour week (a reform often promised and never delivered) and the promotion of a “happy identity” that accommodates French Muslims.

Mr Juppé should win the primary battle, if the polls mean anything any more. But he’s not a shoo-in for the presidency. Yesterday, Emmanuel Macron, a youthful outsider with just two years’ ministerial experience, launched his campaign. Mr Macron, a former investment banker and civil servant, has taken a dogmatically hard line on Brexit negotiations and was until recently economy minister in Mr Hollande’s government. He is ditching the doomed Socialists to run as an independent next year, banking on his fresh face and short political career to capture the anti-politics mood.

Voters are certainly angry and desperate for an end to France’s stubbornly high unemployment rate and horrific run of terrorist attacks. Both issues have fed a rising hostility towards “elites” and the EU that France’s politicians can no longer ignore. So Mr Sarkozy has declared that the EU must transform itself and try to keep Britain in with a new treaty that gives everyone what they want: limits on immigration and restored powers to national governments. It sounds like welcome radicalism, but does anyone believe he’ll deliver it?

Mr Juppé takes the opposite tack. He talks and thinks like a europhile, while declaring that EU enlargement must stop and that Brussels must meddle less. He wants a beefed up EU security force to police the borderless Schengen travel zone, and has even suggested that, once all these enormously difficult reforms are enacted, France and Germany ought to hold referendums on them all.

All of this sounds like a familiar playbook to followers of British politics. Centrist politicians, threatened by a challenger on the Right, start making illustrious promises about the future of the EU and suggesting it’ll all be settled by a referendum – at some point. But this is happening in France, a founding member of the union and one of its most fervent believers. Its politicians can sense that stonewalling isn’t going to work forever.

Brexit will grip the EU next spring even more than it does now. France will conclude its presidential elections in May, weeks after Theresa May has promised to trigger Article 50. The timing is bad for the Brexit negotiation, because politicians make all sorts of silly statements during election campaigns. But if it gives France a president who sees the need to reform and adapt, it could not only help Britain reach a reasonable deal, it might just ensure the EU’s survival, too.