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The Calais wall is nothing like Donald Trump's – but the Left will say anything to undermine our borders

It seems that walls have become "racist". Worse, walls have become synonymous with US Presidential candidate Donald Trump. Or at least that is the case if you are on the political Left in Britain and are looking for any way you can to stop Britain pursuing a policy of normal border security.

Yesterday the Immigration minister Robert Goodwill told the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee that, as part of the government’s efforts to secure the situation in Calais: "We are going to start building this big, new wall very soon.  We’ve done the fence, now we are doing a wall." 

Portions of the Left promptly made the comparison between a British minister saying the word "wall" and a Republic Presidential candidate uttering the same word. Sections of the media then gleefully reported that the immigration minister had earned "Trump comparisons".

The aim of making the Trump comparison is obvious: it is to make the idea of securing the border at Calais seem wholly ludicrous.  Yet whatever one’s views on Donald Trump’s claim that he is going build a huge wall along the American border with Mexico (and even if you think it the most impractical idea in an implausible Presidential season) it is nothing like the strictly limited and urgent need for viable border security at Calais. Given that the bottleneck of migrants there remains the most popular way to get into Britain illegally, the elaborate system of security fences already in place is not mere decoration. Nor – if the government deems a solid wall to do the work better – need the construction of a wall be seen as any wholly new escalation.

But of course those who are objecting include those who believe that there should be no borders at all. A larger number of people on the political Left sympathise with this position though remain understandably concerned about its extremism and wonder about some of its consequences. They too dream of a borderless world, though occasionally notice that while the absence of borders might seem wonderful for them, it might not work out so well for other people. Such as people enjoying a dinner out or attending a concert in Paris one evening. Nevertheless, the movement speaks to a wide portion of the Left who may not want to fully endorse the movement, but will still assist it by doing everything they can to undermine borders.

Though they are good at scoffing and ridiculing, these people are also – to use one of their favourite insults against them – "on the wrong side of history".  For once this is not a meaningless value-judgement but a simple statement of fact. Across the continent of Europe borders are going up everywhere, from the Greek-Macedonian border, all the way along what used to be the migrant route up through the Balkans into northern Europe. Every country that has criticised every other country for doing so has ended up doing the thing it has criticised within weeks. 

This is not a failing. Rather, it would be a failing to do anything otherwise. The mass migration which Europe has encouraged in recent years is making itself felt. And one of the political consequences is the re-erection of borders.

Amid the scoffing and sneering at doing what governments ought to do as a priority – keeping their borders secure – one might sometimes wish the "no borders" (or entirely-weakened-borders) movement actually had to live in the continent-wide slum they would create if their movement had its way. But it is a futile wish. For if they lived in their dream world then the rest of us would be forced to live in it too. In the meantime it is worth reminding them that Donald Trump was not the inventor of the wall. And nor, whatever his other virtues, was he the first person to notice the utility of borders.

 

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