Europe must defend its external border, build a wall even

The always pro-EU leader column of the Evening Standard says that the EU deal on migration should not be dismissed. The 4am agreement has the makings of a solution, says Michel Barnier’s favourite EU fanatic British newspaper not very convincingly.

‎”It’s very far from resolving the problem but it contains the elements that must surely form part of any enduring solution.”

There is the promise of financial help for Middle Eastern and African countries to process migrants there, we hear. What could possibly go wrong? No scope for corruption or appropriation of funds there. No, none at all. We need to try to make it work, says the Standard, even though it is all voluntary and patched together by the EU to avoid a meltdown in the middle of the night. Give Brussels a chance, says the Standard.

No. That leader column today is pure drivel, just light weight Osbornite spindoctoring.

The forces at work here are hugely powerful and complex‎, of course. But the implications of the abject failure of the European political class in the last decade are not yet fully understood. Even when the second largest contributor to the EU – Britain – quits it does not mean that the penny drops.

You’ll hear this in Sweden and Italy for example. It is on display in Austria, Poland and Hungary, where voters have had enough. There is horror at what has been wrought by the European elite led by the failed Angela Merkel (who was always over-rated, with achievements other than holding power little more than zero.)

For years the arrogant globalisers – with their fetish for open borders – would not listen. Now, in the EU, with crisis-hit Italy fired up they produce a piddling voluntary scheme and call it a solution.

What is required, I suspect, is what we are not going to get until people wake up to the need for a complete rethink of European defence, security and border control post-Brexit. Trump might prompt it, when next month he comes to Europe to shake up Nato. He may threaten to withdraw, we hear.

Europe – both those countries in the EU and not – need an urgent plan to increase defence spending to ward off Russia. Europe cannot rely on the US now under Trump. Europe has to take control, take responsibility. The EU obviously can’t do it. It’s rotten on foreign affairs and defence and can’t even hold on to Britain.

That means a pan-European successor to Nato may be required. A central part of its mission should be to guard the southern border and help coordinate security and flow through airports anywhere in Europe.‎ A little bit of defence of European civilisation wouldn’t go amiss.

On migration, building a wall – Trump-style – isn’t really going to work at sea‎, but the equivalent is required. Police the Med, properly, on a scale never seen before. Help the stressed Italians – who have kit in Libya stemming the flow – in a meaningful way with ships and personnel.

Send a message year after year that is absolutely clear. Europe welcomes controlled migration and fulfils it’s obligations to genuine – genuine – refugees. But it is not an open door. It will guard its external border. And if the Hungarians want Hungary to remain Hungary, respect that and start listening and learning why.

The way to respond to populism (a liberal term of abuse for parties offering to do what voters want) is to grip this.