If there was one thing that symbolised what many still see as the fraudulent approach of Brexiteers during the EU referendum campaign, it was the infamous bus promising £350m extra a week for the NHS.
But maybe Brexit critics should consider another image.
In the view of Emmanuel Macron, expressed during a joint press conference with Keir Starmer yesterday to unveil a one in, one out migration exchange deal, the real whopper was told by Brexiteers when, in 2016, Nigel Farage unveiled his controversial poster featuring thousands of migrants at the EU border alongside the slogan “Breaking Point”.
It came with a claim that if the UK did not leave the EU, it would be forced to accept all those preparing to stampede across Europe.
In an epic rant on the subject of Brexit, the French president, who refused to meet with Farage during his three-day state visit, was clear that he considered this the biggest lie of all.
To the obvious embarrassment of the prime minister, who was standing next to him, Macron did not hold back on his view that promises to control immigration, both legal and illegal, and to put an end to out-of-control numbers, had been used disingenuously by those who wanted to leave the EU.
He said: “The British people were sold a lie that the problem was Europe. For the first time in nine years, Britain is being pragmatic.”
But it is worth looking at the detail of what he said, in terms of how leaving the EU not only failed to solve the problem but made it worse.
“We need to understand that since Brexit – and I’ll say this honestly, because it’s not your case, prime minister – but many people in your country said that Brexit would help better fight illegal immigration.
“However, it is since Brexit that the UK no longer has any migration agreement with the EU. So, for people wanting to cross, there is no legal ... way in, nor a way of sending people back after a crossing. This is a pull factor to attempt the crossing: exactly the inverse effect of what Brexit promised.”
The French president was not wrong.
The fact is that leaving the EU, and simultaneously the Dublin Agreement, neutered Britain’s chances of simply returning illegal migrants to safe countries in the EU that they had travelled through to reach the UK.
The Dublin Agreement specifically allowed countries to send back migrants to the first safe country they had arrived in, which was a bit more of a problem for places such as Italy, Spain, and some in Eastern Europe.
It was also interesting to note Macron’s claim that a third of all the illegal migrants in the Schengen free travel area of the EU were aiming for Britain because of its pull factors, including language, welfare benefits, and the ease of working undetected in the black economy.
Even in terms of legal migration, Britain saw a huge increase after Brexit from what was already a high level, despite the “take back control” message of the referendum campaign.
Starmer pointedly noted that, while he and the French president were discussing their “groundbreaking” returns agreement, Farage was out on the Channel taking pictures of boats packed with migrants coming over.
He has been doing that since 2020, when, not coincidentally, the UK had already left the EU and the small boats crisis had begun.
The Reform UK leader and others on the right will argue that the real problem is other aspects of international law, including Britain’s membership of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Refugee Convention, which gives migrants the right to apply to stay in the UK because of family ties or for other compelling reasons.
They want Brexit to continue as a process to withdraw Britain from this framework of international agreements, which were drawn up in large part by the UK itself to help establish international order.
These are the “easy answers of populism” complained about by Starmer and Macron on Thursday, and would leave the UK more isolated, just as is happening to the US under Donald Trump, Farage’s ally in the White House.
The legal framework contained a safety valve while Britain was still part of the EU, but the lesson of 2016 is that once one part of an intricate network of deals is unravelled, more will come undone.
Not surprisingly, Farage complained that Starmer’s pilot “one in, one out” deal was a betrayal of Brexit, taking Britain back into the clutches of the EU.
But as an exasperated French president noted, it was actually Britain “being pragmatic for the first time in nine years”.
It would be a great irony, given the nature of the 2016 debate, if migration, more than anything else, were to end up being the factor that sees the UK eventually unpick the effects of Brexit, and maybe, in the long term, even rejoin the bloc.
The UK government is too embarrassed to address Macron’s points at the moment, but the French president has shone a spotlight, once again, on the strong possibility that the biggest decision by this country in the 21st century was based on a fabric of lies.
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