After meeting for the first time with Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Francois Hollande, newly ordained UK Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to announce that post-Brexit, the nation is ready to accept the free movement of its people. ‘British citizens’, May will say in a speech scheduled for sometime later, ‘should expect to continue to be allowed to travel and settle across Europe of their own free will’.
The citizens of other nations however can go jump in the Med if they harbour any hopes of moving to Britain, where the doors are firmly shut and the white cliffs of Dover look out onto a downtrodden Europe saying ‘You shall not pass’.
‘Unless’, after a moment the white cliffs waver, ‘you happen to be a rich businessman on a trip or looking to buy a house, a fair-skinned beauty with blue eyes and blonde hair, a doctor who speaks English fluently or can save lives in a pinch, or come bearing a bountiful hamper full of continental foodstuffs’.
May has already made clear that any discussion on the freedom of movement – one of the four freedoms upon which the very premise of the European Union rests – must account for the more than a million Brits currently living in other parts of Europe.
Why should foreigners get to come and educate us in our universities, prop up our hospitals and the catering and hospitality sectors, engage us with products, technologies, and business deals and contribute more than their share in tax, if we Brits are not in turn allowed to live where we like, sunning ourselves on state pensions while waiting around to die?
