DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Juncker's EU vision is another own goal
Campaigners for Britain’s exit from the EU will be quietly pleased after yesterday’s vainglorious ‘State of the Union’ address, in which Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker outlined his vision of Europe’s future.
Hundreds of thousands of passports to be handed out, allowing economic migrants into Britain… compulsory quotas, forcing member states to accept 160,000 refugees, with more to follow…
Internal borders to be kept open… asylum-seekers given the right to work while they are processed… an end to the requirement that migrants are vetted where they first land… full mobility of labour, with centrally-agreed pay rules…
![Jean Claude Juncker speech to the European Parliament called on the EU to resettle 160,000 Syrian migrants](http://web.archive.org./web/20170714180804/http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/09/10/00/2C1BBFAA00000578-0-image-a-53_1441843095740.jpg)
Jean Claude Juncker speech to the European Parliament called on the EU to resettle 160,000 Syrian migrants
![Britain's population is set to increase by 16 million between now and 2060 without accepting mass immigration](http://web.archive.org./web/20170714180804/http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/09/10/01/2C1D6AE000000578-0-image-a-56_1441843364226.jpg)
Britain's population is set to increase by 16 million between now and 2060 without accepting mass immigration
Thankfully, Britain retains an opt-out from quotas. But while we’re signed up to the EU’s free movement rules, we’ll remain at the mercy of our partners if they grant citizenship to all-comers.
And how much longer could we resist the pressure to hand Brussels full control of our migration and asylum policy (and much else besides), if David Cameron fails to secure agreement to radical reform of our membership terms?
Indeed, every word of Mr Juncker’s speech, with his demands for ever-closer union, might have been calculated to boost the Better Off Out brigade, in a Britain whose public services are under acute strain after 15 years of the most dramatic mass immigration in our history.
It’s very different for Germany. With a population forecast to shrink by 10.5million before 2060, leaving fewer working age Germans than pensioners, it is desperate to expand its labour force.
Doesn’t this explain Angela Merkel’s readiness to accept migrants – rather than pure compassion, as she pretends?
By contrast, Brussels predicts Britain’s population will balloon by 16million over the same period. No wonder nearly half of Britons say the Government plans to take too many Syrian refugees.
Yet still Mr Juncker hectors us to throw open our doors to more. This is despite the fact that we contribute far more than any other EU country to the humane and pragmatic policy of looking after refugees in countries bordering their homeland.
Why, voters may ask, should a nation like ours be preached at and dictated to by the former prime minister of the tiny, corrupt Grand Duchy of Luxembourg?
First the farce of the single currency. Now the tragedy of the refugee crisis. Who can blame the Brexit campaigners if they’re starting to believe that events are conspiring to support them?
Backing for the brave
Throwing powerful weight behind the Mail’s Betrayal of the Brave campaign, the Defence Select Committee condemns the ‘wholly unacceptable’ treatment of our troops’ Afghan interpreters who have been abandoned to the Taliban.
The cross-party MPs tell ministers that it’s not only a matter of honour to offer asylum to these courageous men and their families. It is also vital to ensure our soldiers receive similar help in future.
With some interpreters already killed, and the rest in daily danger, how much longer can Defence Minister Penny Mordaunt keep insisting that there is ‘no major problem’?
MP’s weasel words
After himself blackening the reputation of Paula Radcliffe, Tory MP Jesse Norman blames the media for ‘taking out of context’ his remark that British winners of the London Marathon are potentially ‘under suspicion of very high levels of blood doping’.
The ‘press pack’, he says, are a ‘herd of ungulates’, meaning hoofed animals.
Since Radcliffe is the only British winner of the London Marathon for nearly 20 years, what does this make Mr Norman? A weasel – or a skunk?
![Tory MP Jesse Norman, pictured, accused the media of taking his comments on blood doping 'out of context'](http://web.archive.org./web/20170714180804/http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/09/10/01/0536FC4A00000514-0-image-a-54_1441843292690.jpg)
Tory MP Jesse Norman, pictured, accused the media of taking his comments on blood doping 'out of context'
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