It was the Leave campaign’s pledge to reduce EU immigration that won it the referendum. But Daniel Hannan struck a rather different tone on last night’s Newsnight. “It means free movement of labour,” the Conservative MEP said of the post-Brexit model he envisaged. An exasperated Evan Davis replied: “I’m sorry we’ve just been through three months of agony on the issue of immigration. The public have been led to believe that what they have voted for is an end to free movement.”
Hannan protested that EU migrants would lose “legal entitlements to live in other countries, to vote in other countries and to claim welfare and to have the same university tuition”. But Davis wasn’t backing down. “Why didn’t you say this in the campaign? Why didn’t you say in the campaign that you were wanting a scheme where we have free movement of labour? Come on, that’s completely at odds with what the public think they have just voted for.”
Hannan concluded: “We never said there was going to be some radical decline … we want a measure of control”. Your Mole suspects many voters assumed otherwise. If immigration is barely changed, Hannan and others will soon be burned by the very fires they stoked.
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