Ending the "free movement of people" - eurospeak for uncontrolled immigration - was supposed to be one of the red lines of David Cameron's renegotiation of our EU membership but a number of public statements by EU officals and leaders has forced him to backtrack. Instead of talking about limiting the number of people who can live and work here, he's now talking about "reforming" the benefits system to delay the point at which the aforementioned unlimited number of people can claim benefits here. And even that has been ruled out by Poland given that £450k a week in child benefit is paid for children living in Poland!
The amount of money paid out in benefits to newly arrived immigrants - and especially child benefit paid for children who don't even live in the country - is an understandable bone of contention but it's a consequence of uncontrolled immigration and it can't be fixed without controlling immigration. Nor does it fix the problem of 9 out of 10 new jobs going to newly arrived immigrants and increasing the number of long term unemployed amongst the existing workforce with all the associated economic and social problems that long term unemployment entails.
Every "demand" that Cameron has made has been flatly refused. He's been told that there will be no treaty change, no limits on immigration, no restrictions on benefits, no end to ever closer union. There is no legal way to "repatriate" powers from the EU without treaty change and he's already been told that there will be no treaty change. The British government's army of propagandists are already spinning like crazy and it's only going to get worse as the referendum gets closer and it becomes harder to conceal the fact that the EU is unreformable.
wonkotsane is an author at Bloggers4UKIP.
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