How anti-migrant speeches have gained over a part of the left in Europe | EUROtoday

From a distance, their little music has the martial tone of a far-right anthem. Praise of expulsions, diatribes towards household reunification, criticism of multiculturalism: the British and, above all, Danish governments promise their voters exemplary severity in issues of immigration. These new prosecutors of open societies firmly plead for “everyone at home”: the free motion of individuals appears to them a harmful chimera.

The Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, proclaims loud and clear that her nation is now aiming “zero asylum applications” and gives Lithuania kilometers of barbed wire to guard its border. His immigration minister, Rasmus Stoklund, compares migrants convicted by the courts to weeds and advocates their return to the nation, even when they danger the demise penalty. UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood thunders towards “golden ticket” provided, in response to her, to migrants from the second they set foot on British soil.

Do these European leaders come from a nationalist occasion situated on the far proper of the political spectrum? From a populist anti-immigration occasion? Of a xenophobic motion that aspires to lock the borders? No: all three belong to events which were firmly anchored on the left for greater than a century – the Danish Social Democratic Party was born in 1871, and the British Labor Party was based in 1893 notably by the Scottish socialist Keir Hardie earlier than changing into, in 1900, underneath the management of the unions, the Independent Labor Party.

You have 91.62% of this text left to learn. The relaxation is reserved for subscribers.