EUROPE is facing its gravest refugee crisis since the second world war. While Germany has shouldered the heaviest burden, Britain’s government, mindful of anti-immigrant feeling at home, has looked on. Yet public opinion seems to have shifted: since the publication of harrowing photographs of a Syrian boy found drowned on a beach in Turkey, even right-wing tabloids such as the Sun have called for more help for refugees. Meanwhile, nudges from the rest of Europe have grown less subtle: Germany’s best-selling newspaper, Bild, has dubbed Britons “the slackers of Europe”. So on September 7th David Cameron, the prime minister, announced a new plan. Britain would take more Syrian refugees: 20,000 by the end of the parliament, in 2020.
The belated promise looks to many like a feeble concession: Britain’s commitment to accept the equivalent of 4,000 Syrians a year is 0.8% of the annual number that Germany’s vice-chancellor has said his country could accommodate. About as many refugees were welcomed by Germany on a single recent weekend than Britain has agreed to take in the next five years. And the plan to take refugees directly from camps in Syria, instead of helping to lighten Europe’s load, will lose Mr Cameron goodwill as he seeks to renegotiate the terms of Britain’s EU membership ahead of an in/out...Continue reading
via Brian Rushton, A hasty change of heart
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