Arguing for Brexit

The theologian and commentator Giles Fraser voted Brexit. I was surprised when I realised this, but then I was interested in the argument he made in his column under the heading ‘Labour is partly to blame for the racists’ capture of the EU debate’. It seemed clear that there was a critical moment in the campaign when the Tory-dominated Vote Leave campaign decided that it would shift its focus towards immigration and start arguing for an Australian-style policy that would allow people to say that they were not against immigration but for its control, so that the country could decide who it wanted to allow in and when – this would deliver the promise of control over borders.

It made this move after the immigration figures were publicly announced to have gone above 300,000, well beyond the tens of thousands that Cameron had declared to be his aim. Nigel Farage noted the move, saying that major figures in the Tory Party were now arguing for what he and UKIP had been arguing for over 20 years. He signalled it as a turning point in the campaign, and so it proved to be.

But Cameron and the Remain campaign refused to talk about immigration, even though they were advised by many senior figures to do so, insisting that they would not change their message, which had to do with the economic risks of leaving the EU. Cameron did not want to be drawn onto the ground that would continually remind the wider population of his own failures to control immigration, but this served only to consolidate in people’s minds that there was no way of controlling levels of immigration without deciding to leave the EU. For many this seemed to frame a new common sense, and the Remain campaign could only avoid the issue, but not really face it. People saw through this easily and felt that they had reason on their side: there seemed to be no alternative to Brexit if you wanted to control immigration.

Giles Fraser argues that ‘The problem wasn’t that Jeremy Corbyn gave lacklustre support to the remain campaign. The problem was that he gave it any support at all.