Reform is served. This week, Donald Tusk tabled a draft proposal for changes to the UK’s membership of the European Union. The most contentious aspect of the deal, at home and abroad, is the emergency brake stopping EU migrants claiming benefits for 4 years.
Migration has dominated international debate in recent months, with the refugee crisis eliciting strong reactions. As the Syria conference was taking place in London yesterday, ComRes research showed that the attitudes of the British public have hardened against welcoming more refugees into the UK since the photos of Aylan Kurdi on a beach emerged.
But long before this, migration has dominated the national debate, being routinely named one of the top concerns by the British public - and it is set to be a key component of the EU referendum campaign.
With so much of the renegotiation around UK’s membership of the EU hinging on one single demand aimed at lessening the ‘pull’ factor for immigration, who do Britons think of when the press and politicians talk about migrants? Is it any foreign-born coming from outside Europe? Or within Europe? Are they still migrants if marrying a Briton? And are their kids? Ultimately, where do we draw the line?
A ComRes poll of Londoners helps shed some light on this issue: while three quarters of Londoners consider a non-EU citizen coming to the UK to look for a job as a ‘migrant’, fewer than three in five label a EU national coming to the UK under the same circumstances a migrant. If it’s a EU citizen marrying a Briton, then less than two in five say that person counts as a migrant; and if it’s Britons themselves moving back to the UK, only 4% of Londoners would think of them as migrants.
