They think that closed borders mean others can’t come in but they can go out
There were satisfied reactions when British politicians told the electorate that ‘foreigners’ would lose their rights in Britain and that they would no longer be able to enter the United Kingdom freely and live and work there.
But now look at the reaction when Theresa May points out the obvious flipside to this: that the British will concurrently lose their rights to move freely about the 27 member states of the European Union and Norway and Switzerland.
That’s 29 countries in Europe which British citizens will require permission to enter, from which they will have to confirm their departure, and where they will not be able to live and/or work without a ‘by your leave’ from the state authority, which will not be automatically granted.
Theresa May, the favourite contender to replace Cameron as prime minister, said something equally obvious: that it would be “unwise” to promise that non-British EU citizens who are in Britain at the time when it leaves the European Union will have special status and be permitted to remain – because this will encourage people to move to the UK now so as to be covered by that special status.
I see her point, but Mrs May appears to be still labouring under the delusion that people want to be in the United Kingdom because it’s fabulous in its own right, and not because it’s fabulous in the European Union. Nobody except the terminally deluded thinks that Britain has a great future outside the EU or that it is going to be a great place to work in the fields that were attractive only because it is in the EU. People operating at a certain level are certainly not going to be flocking there now, and those who are there already have begun making alternative arrangements, not because they fear the loss of their status under the law, but because they have correctly judged that they don’t want to be there when the inevitable chaos hits and recession opens its savage jaws.
